THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
By Edgar Allen Poe

 

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu'on le touche il rèsonne...

                                 De Béranger.

   During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn

of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I

had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary

tract of country ;  and at length found myself, as the shades of the

evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.  I

know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a

sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.  I say insufferable ;

 for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable,

because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even

the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.  I looked

upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple

landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the

vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few

white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul

which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the

after-dream of the reveler upon opium - the bitter lapse into

everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil.  There was an

iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed

dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could

torture into aught of the sublime.  What was it - I paused to think -

what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of

Usher ?  It was a mystery all insoluble ;  nor could I grapple with

the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered.  I was forced

to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond

doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple natural objects which

have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power

lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I

reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of

the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to

modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful

impression ;  and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the

precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled

luster by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more

thrilling than before - upon the remodeled and inverted images of

the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and

eye-like windows.

    Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a

sojourn of some weeks.  Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one

of my boon companions in boyhood ;  but many years had elapsed since

our last meeting.  A letter, however, had lately reached me in a

distant part of the country - a letter from him - which, in its

wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal

reply.  The MS.  gave evidence of nervous agitation.  The writer

spoke of acute bodily illness - of a mental disorder which oppressed

him - and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his

only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness

of my society, some alleviation of his malady.  It was the manner in

which all this, and much more, was said - it was the apparent _heart_

that went with his request - which allowed me no room for hesitation;

and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very

singular summons.

    Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I

really knew little of my friend.  His reserve had been always

excessive and habitual.  I was aware, however, that his very ancient

family had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility

of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works

of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of

munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate

devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox

and easily recognizable beauties, of musical science.  I had learned,

too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all

time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring

branch ;  in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct

line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very

temporary variation, so lain.  It was this deficiency, I considered,

while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of

the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while

speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long

lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other - it was this

deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent

undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the

name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the

original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation

of the "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in

the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the

family mansion.

    I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish

experiment - that of looking down within the tarn - had been to

deepen the first singular impression.  There can be no doubt that the

consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition - for why

should I not so term it ?  - served mainly to accelerate the increase

itself.  Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all

sentiments having terror as a basis.  And it might have been for this

reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself,

from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy - a

fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid

force of the sensations which oppressed me.  I had so worked upon my

imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and

domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their

immediate vicinity - an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air

of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the

gray wall, and the silent tarn - a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,

sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

    Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I

scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal

feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity.  The

discoloration of ages had been great.  Minute fungi overspread the

whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves.

Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No

portion of the masonry had fallen ;  and there appeared to be a wild

inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the

crumbling condition of the individual stones.  In this there was much

that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has

rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance

from the breath of the external air.  Beyond this indication of

extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of

instability.  Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have

discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the

roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag

direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

    Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.

 A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway

of the hall.  A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in

silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to

the _studio_ of his master.  Much that I encountered on the way

contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of

which I have already spoken.  While the objects around me - while the

carvings of the ceilings, the somber tapestries of the walls, the

ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial

trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to

such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy - while I

hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this - I still

wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary

images were stirring up.  On one of the staircases, I met the

physician of the family.  His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled

expression of low cunning and perplexity.  He accosted me with

trepidation and passed on.  The valet now threw open a door and

ushered me into the presence of his master.

    The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty.  The

windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance

from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from

within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the

trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more

prominent objects around ;  the eye, however, struggled in vain to

reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the

vaulted and fretted ceiling.  Dark draperies hung upon the walls.

The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and

tattered.  Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about,

but failed to give any vitality to the scene.  I felt that I breathed

an atmosphere of sorrow.  An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable

gloom hung over and pervaded all.

    Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been

lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which

had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality - of

the constrained effort of the _ennuyé_ ;  man of the world. A glance,

however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity.

We sat down ;  and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon

him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe.  Surely, man had never

before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick

Usher !  It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit

the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my

early boyhood.  Yet the character of his face had been at all times

remarkable.  A cadaverousness of complexion ;  an eye large, liquid,

and luminous beyond comparison ;  lips somewhat thin and very pallid,

but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ;  a nose of a delicate Hebrew

model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations ;

a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want

of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity ;

these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the

temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.

And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these

features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much

of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.  The now ghastly pallor of

the skin, and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things

startled and even awed me.  The silken hair, too, had been suffered

to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it

floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with

effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple

humanity.

    In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an

incoherence - an inconsistency ;  and I soon found this to arise from

a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual

trepidancy - an excessive nervous agitation.  For something of this

nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by

reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced

from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament.  His action

was alternately vivacious and sullen.  His voice varied rapidly from

a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in

abeyance) to that species of energetic concision - that abrupt,

weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation - that leaden,

self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may

be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of

opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

    It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his

earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford

him.  He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the

nature of his malady.  It was, he said, a constitutional and a family

evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy - a mere

nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon

pass off.  It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.

Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me ;

although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration

had their weight.  He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the

senses ;  the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear

only garments of certain texture ;  the odors of all flowers were

oppressive ;  his eyes were tortured by even a faint light ;  and

there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments,

which did not inspire him with horror.

    To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.

"I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly.

Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost.  I dread the events

of the future, not in themselves, but in their results.  I shudder at

the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may

operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul.  I have, indeed, no

abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror.  In

this unnerved - in this pitiable condition - I feel that the period

will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason

together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

    I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and

equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He

was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the

dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never

ventured forth - in regard to an influence whose supposititious force

was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence

which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family

mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his

spirit - an effect which the physique of the gray walls and

turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at

length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

    He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the

peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more

natural and far more palpable origin - to the severe and

long-continued illness - indeed to the evidently approaching

dissolution - of a tenderly beloved sister - his sole companion for

long years - his last and only relative on earth.  "Her decease," he

said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave him

(him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the

Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called)

passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without

having noticed my presence, disappeared.  I regarded her with an

utter astonishment not unmingled with dread - and yet I found it

impossible to account for such feelings.  A sensation of stupor

oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps.  When a door,

at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and

eagerly the countenance of the brother - but he had buried his face

in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary

wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled

many passionate tears.

    The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of

her physicians.  A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the

person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially

cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis.  Hitherto she had

steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not

betaken herself finally to bed ;  but, on the closing in of the

evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother

told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating

power of the destroyer ;  and I learned that the glimpse I had

obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should

obtain - that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no

more.

    For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either

Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest

endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend.  We painted and

read together ;  or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild

improvisations of his speaking guitar.  And thus, as a closer and

still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses

of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all

attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent

positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and

physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

    I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I

thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher.  Yet I should

fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the

studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me

the way.  An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a

sulphureous luster over all.  His long improvised dirges will ring

forever in my ears.  Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a

certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the

last waltz of Von Weber.  From the paintings over which his elaborate

fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at

which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing

not why ;  - from these paintings (vivid as their images now are

before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small

portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words.

By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested

and overawed attention.  If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal

was Roderick Usher.  For me at least - in the circumstances then

surrounding me - there arose out of the pure abstractions which the

hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass, an intensity of

intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the

contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of

Fuseli.

    One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not

so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth,

although feebly, in words.  A small picture presented the interior of

an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,

smooth, white, and without interruption or device.  Certain accessory

points of the design served well to convey the idea that this

excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.

No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no

torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible ;  yet a

flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a

ghastly and inappropriate splendor.

    I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve

which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the

exception of certain effects of stringed instruments.  It was,

perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the

guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic

character of his performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his

_impromptus_ could not be so accounted for.  They must have been, and

were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias

(for he not infrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal

improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and

concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only

in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words

of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered.  I was, perhaps,

the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the

under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived,

and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of

the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne.  The verses, which

were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not

accurately, thus:

                         I.

     In the greenest of our valleys,

         By good angels tenanted,

     Once a fair and stately palace -

         Radiant palace - reared its head.

     In the monarch Thought's dominion -

         It stood there !

     Never seraph spread a pinion

         Over fabric half so fair.

                         II.

     Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

         On its roof did float and flow;

     (This - all this - was in the olden

         Time long ago)

     And every gentle air that dallied,

         In that sweet day,

     Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

         A winged odor went away.

                         III.

     Wanderers in that happy valley

         Through two luminous windows saw

     Spirits moving musically

         To a lute's well-tunéd law,

     Round about a throne, where sitting

         (Porphyrogene  !)

     In state his glory well befitting,

         The ruler of the realm was seen.

                          IV.

     And all with pearl and ruby glowing

         Was the fair palace door,

     Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

         And sparkling evermore,

     A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

         Was but to sing,

     In voices of surpassing beauty,

         The wit and wisdom of their king.

                         V.

     But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

         Assailed the monarch's high estate ;

     (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

         Shall dawn upon him, desolate  !)

     And, round about his home, the glory

         That blushed and bloomed

     Is but a dim-remembered story

         Of the old time entombed.

                         VI.

     And travelers now within that valley,

         Through the red-litten windows, see

     Vast forms that move fantastically

         To a discordant melody ;

     While, like a rapid ghastly river,

         Through the pale door,

     A hideous throng rush out forever,

         And laugh - but smile no more.

    I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us

into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of

Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for

other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with

which he maintained it.  This opinion, in its general form, was that

of the sentience of all vegetable things.  But, in his disordered

fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed,

under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization.  I lack

words to express the full extent, or the earnest _abandon_ of his

persuasion.  The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously

hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers.  The

conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in

the method of collocation of these stones - in the order of their

arrangement, as well as in that of the many _fungi_ which overspread

them, and of the decayed trees which stood around - above all, in the

long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its

reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.  Its evidence - the

evidence of the sentience - was to be seen, he said, (and I here

started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an

atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.  The result

was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and

terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of

his family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him - what he was.

Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

    * Watson, Dr.  Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop

of Landaff.  -  See "Chemical Essays," vol v.

    Our books - the books which, for years, had formed no small

portion of the mental existence of the invalid - were, as might be

supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm.  We

pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of

Gresset ;  the Belphegor of Machiavelli ;  the Heaven and Hell of

Swedenborg ;  the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg ;

the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indaginé, and of De la

Chambre ;  the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck ;  and the

City of the Sun of Campanella.  One favorite volume was a small

octavo edition of the _Directorium Inquisitorium_, by the Dominican

Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about

the old African Satyrs and Œgipans, over which Usher would sit

dreaming for hours.  His chief delight, however, was found in the

perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic -

the manual of a forgotten church - the _Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum

Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

    I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of

its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening,

having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he

stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight,

(previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous vaults

within the main walls of the building.  The worldly reason, however,

assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel

at liberty to dispute.  The brother had been led to his resolution

(so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the

malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on

the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation

of the burial-ground of the family.  I will not deny that when I

called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon

the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire

to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means

an unnatural, precaution.

    At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the

arrangements for the temporary entombment.  The body having been

encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest.  The vault in which we

placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half

smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity

for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of

admission for light ;  lying, at great depth, immediately beneath

that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment.

It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst

purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit

for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion

of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which

we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper.  The door, of

massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight

caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

    Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this

region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of

the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant.  A striking

similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my

attention ;  and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out

some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had

been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had

always existed between them.  Our glances, however, rested not long

upon the dead - for we could not regard her unawed.  The disease

which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left,

as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptically character, the

mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that

suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in

death.  We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the

door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy

apartments of the upper portion of the house.

    And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable

change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend.

His ordinary manner had vanished.  His ordinary occupations were

neglected or forgotten.  He roamed from chamber to chamber with

hurried, unequal, and objectless step.  The pallor of his countenance

had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue - but the luminousness

of his eye had utterly gone out.  The once occasional huskiness of

his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme

terror, habitually characterized his utterance.  There were times,

indeed, when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring

with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the

necessary courage.  At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all

into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him

gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest

attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound.  It was no wonder

that his condition terrified - that it infected me.  I felt creeping

upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own

fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

    It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the

seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within

the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep

came not near my couch - while the hours waned and waned away.  I

struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me.

I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due

to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room - of

the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the

breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the

walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed.  But my

efforts were fruitless.  An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded

my frame ;  and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus

of utterly causeless alarm.  Shaking this off with a gasp and a

struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly

within the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened - I know not

why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me - to certain low

and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at

long intervals, I knew not whence.  Overpowered by an intense

sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my

clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the

night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition

into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the

apartment.

    I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an

adjoining staircase arrested my attention.  I presently recognized it

as that of Usher.  In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle

touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp.  His countenance was,

as usual, cadaverously wan - but, moreover, there was a species of

mad hilarity in his eyes - an evidently restrained hysteria in his

whole demeanor.  His air appalled me - but anything was preferable to

the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his

presence as a relief.

    "And you have not seen it ?" he said abruptly, after having

stared about him for some moments in silence - "you have not then

seen it ?  - but, stay !  you shall." Thus speaking, and having

carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and

threw it freely open to the storm.

    The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our

feet.  It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and

one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty.  A whirlwind had

apparently collected its force in our vicinity ;  for there were

frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind ;  and

the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press

upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the

life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points

against each other, without passing away into the distance.  I say

that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this

- yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars - nor was there any

flashing forth of the lightning.  But the under surfaces of the huge

masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects

immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a

faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung

about and enshrouded the mansion.

    "You must not - you shall not behold this !" said I,

shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from

the window to a seat.  "These appearances, which bewilder you, are

merely electrical phenomena not uncommon - or it may be that they

have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn.  Let us

close this casement ;  - the air is chilling and dangerous to your

frame.  Here is one of your favorite romances.  I will read, and you

shall listen ;  - and so we will pass away this terrible night

together."

    The antique volume which I had taken up was the "Mad Trist" of

Sir Launcelot Canning ;  but I had called it a favorite of Usher's

more in sad jest than in earnest ;  for, in truth, there is little in

its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest

for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend.  It was, however,

the only book immediately at hand ;  and I indulged a vague hope that

the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find

relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar

anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read.

Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity

with which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the

tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my

design 

    I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where

Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable

admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an

entrance by force.  Here, it will be remembered, the words of the

narrative run thus:

    "And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was

now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which

he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who,

in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the

rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest,

uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the

plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand ;  and now pulling

therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder,

that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and

reverberated throughout the forest."

    At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment,

paused ;  for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my

excited fancy had deceived me) - it appeared to me that, from some

very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my

ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the

echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and

ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described.  It

was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my

attention ;  for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements,

and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the

sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested

or disturbed me.  I continued the story:

    "But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door,

was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful

hermit ;  but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and

prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard

before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver ;  and upon the wall

there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten -

     Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin ;

     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

    And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the

dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a

shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had

fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of

it, the like whereof was never before heard."

    Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild

amazement - for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this

instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it

proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,

but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound -

the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for

the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

    Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second

and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting

sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I

still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any

observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion.  I was by no

means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question ;  although,

assuredly, a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes,

taken place in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had

gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the

door of the chamber ;  and thus I could but partially perceive his

features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were

murmuring inaudibly.  His head had dropped upon his breast - yet I

knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the

eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.  The motion of his body,

too, was at variance with this idea - for he rocked from side to side

with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.  Having rapidly taken

notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which

thus proceeded:

    "And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of

the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the

breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass

from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the

silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall ;

 which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his

feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing

sound."

    No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than - as if a

shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a

floor of silver - I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and

clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation.  Completely

unnerved, I leaped to my feet ;  but the measured rocking movement of

Usher was undisturbed.  I rushed to the chair in which he sat.  His

eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole

countenance there reigned a stony rigidity.  But, as I placed my hand

upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person

;  a sickly smile quivered about his lips ;  and I saw that he spoke

in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my

presence.  Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous

import of his words.

    "Not hear it ?  - yes, I hear it, and have heard it.  Long -

long - long - many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it -

yet I dared not - oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am !  - I

dared not - I dared not speak !  We have put her living in the

tomb !  Said I not that my senses were acute ?  I now tell you

that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin.  I

heard them - many, many days ago - yet I dared not - I dared not

speak ! And now - to-night - Ethelred - ha !  ha ! - the breaking

of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the

clangor of the shield !  - say, rather, the rending of her coffin,

and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles

within the coppered archway of the vault !   Oh whither shall I fly ?

 Will she not be here anon ?  Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for

my haste ?  Have I not heard her footstep on the stair ?  Do I not

distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart ?  Madman !"

- here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his

syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul - "Madman !

 I tell you that she now stands without the door !"

    As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been

found the potency of a spell - the huge antique pannels to which the

speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous

and ebony jaws.  It was the work of the rushing gust - but then

without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure

of the lady Madeline of Usher.  There was blood upon her white robes,

and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her

emaciated frame.  For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to

and fro upon the threshold - then, with a low moaning cry, fell

heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and

now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim

to the terrors he had anticipated.

    From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast.  The

storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing

the old causeway.  Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light,

and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued ;

for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me.  The

radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now

shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which

I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a

zigzag direction, to the base.  While I gazed, this fissure rapidly

widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire

orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain reeled as

I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous

shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and

dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments

of the "House of Usher."