APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/houseusher/HOUSEUSHER

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             The Fall of the House of Usher


          Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
          Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne.
                                        DE BERANGER


During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.  I know not how it
was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.  I say insufferable; for the
feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasureable, because poetic,
sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest
natural images of the desolate or terrible.  I looked upon the scene
before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the
domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a
few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation
more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the
bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil.
There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed
dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture
into aught of the sublime.  What was it--I paused to think--what was it
that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?  It was
a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies
that crowded upon me as I pondered.  I was forced to fall back upon the
unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth.  It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression; <p 138 and, acting upon this idea, I
reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that
lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a
shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and
inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the
vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks.  Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of
my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last
meeting.  A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of
the country--a letter from him-- which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.  The MS gave
evidence of nervous agitation.  The writer spoke of acute bodily
illness--of a mental disorder which oppressed him--and of an earnest
desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with
a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
alleviation of his malady.  It was the manner in which all this, and
much more, was said--it was the apparent heart that went with his
request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly
obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend.  His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual.  I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been
noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,
displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and
manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps
even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable beauties, of
musical science.  I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth, at
no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family
lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling
and very temporary variation, so lain.  It was this deficiency, I
considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the
character of the premises with the accredited character of the people,
and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in <p
139 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 suspersition--for why should I not so term
it?--served mainly to accelerate the increase itself.  Such, I have long
known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a
basis.  And it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again
uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there
grew in my mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I
but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed
me.  I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about
the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to
themselves and their immediate vicinity-- an atmosphere which had no
affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the
decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and
mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building.  Its principal feature seemed
to be that of an excessive antiquity.  The discoloration of ages had
been great.  Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a
fine tangled web-work from the eaves.  Yet all this was apart from any
extraordinary dilapidation.  No portion of the masonry had fallen; and
there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect
adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual
stones.  In this there was much that reminded me of the specious
totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some
neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external
air.  Beyond <p 140 this indication of extensive decay, however, the
fabric gave little token of instability.  Perhaps the eye of a
scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible
fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made
its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the
sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.  A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of
the hall.  A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,
through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of
his master.  Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not
how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.
While the objects around me--while the carvings of the ceilings, the
sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and
the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but
matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my
infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all
this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which
ordinary images were stirring up.  On one of the staircases, I met the
physician of the family.  His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled
expression of low cunning and perplexity.  He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on.  The valet now threw open a door and ushered
me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty.  The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a dis- tance from the
black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.  Feeble
gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes,
and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects
around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles
of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.
Dark draperies hung upon the walls.  The general furniture was profuse,
comfortless, antique, and tattered.  Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene.  I
felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.  An air of stern, deep,
and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all. <p 141

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

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence--an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble
and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy--an excessive
nervous agitation.  For something of this nature I had indeed been
prepared, no less by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish
traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical
conformation and temperament.  His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen.  His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the
animal <p 142 spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of
energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and
hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self- balanced and perfectly
modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost
drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his
most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him.  He
entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his
malady.  It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one
for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he
immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off.  It displayed
itself in a host of unnatural sensations.  Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms, and
the general manner of the narration had their weight.  He suffered much
from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone
endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of
all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint
light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed
instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.  'I shall
perish,' said he, 'I must perish in this deplorable folly.  Thus, thus,
and not otherwise, shall I be lost.  I dread the events of the future,
not in themselves, but in their results.  I shudder at the thought of
any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon this
intolerable agitation of soul.  I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect--in terror.  In this unnerved--in this
pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive
when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the
grim phantasm, FEAR.'

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal
hints, another singular feature of his mental condition.  He was
enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling
which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured
forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed
in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated--an influence which some
peculiarities in the mere <p 143 form and substance of his family
mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his
spirit--an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and
of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought
about upon the morale of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the
peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more
natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued
illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dis- solution--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 <p 144 endeavours
to alleviate the melancholy of my friend.  We painted and read together;
or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his
speaking guitar.  And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy
admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind
from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth
upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher.  Yet I should fail in
any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or
of the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way.  An
excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over
all.  His long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears.  Among
other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and
amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber.  From the
paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch
by touch, into vagueness at which I shuddered the more thrillingly,
because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings (vivid as
their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more
than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely
written words.  By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his
designs, he arrested and overawed attention.  If ever mortal painted an
idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher.  For me at least--in the
circumstances then surrounding me--there arose out of the pure
abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas,
an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in
the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of
Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although
feebly, in words.  A small picture presented the interior of an
immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,
white, and without interruption or device.  Certain accessory points of
the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an
exceeding depth below the surface of the earth.  No outlet was observed
in any <p 145 portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other
artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays
rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate
splendour.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of
certain effects of stringed instruments.  It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave
birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of the performances.
But the fervid <i 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 fantasies (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself
with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental
collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as
observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial
excitement.  The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily
remembered.  I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he
gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I
fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness
on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her
throne.  The verses, which were entitled 'The Haunted Palace', ran very
nearly, if not accurately, thus:

                            I

               In the greenest of our valleys,
                 By good angels tenanted,
               Once a fair and stately palace--
                 Radiant palace--reared its head.
               In the monarch Thought's dominion--
                 It stood there!
               Never seraph spread a pinion
                 Over fabric half so fair.

                           II

               Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
                 On its roof did float and flow;
               (This--all this--was in the olden
                 Time long ago) <p 146
               And every gentle air that dallied,
                 In that sweet day,
               Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
                 A winged odour went away.

                           III

               Wanderers in that happy valley
                 Through two luminous windows saw
               Spirits moving musically
                 To a lute's well tuned law,
               Round about a throne, where sitting
                 (Porphyrogene!)
               In state his glory well befitting,
                 The ruler of the realm was seen.

                           IV

               And all with pearl and ruby glowing
                 Was the fair palace door,
               Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
                 And sparkling evermore,
               A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
                 Was but to sing,
               In voices of surpassing beauty,
                 The wit and wisdom of their king.

                            V

               But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
                 Assailed the monarch's high estate;
               (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
                 Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
               And, round about his home, the glory
                 That blushed and bloomed
               Is but a dim-remembered story,
                 Of the old time entombed.

                           VI

               And travellers now within that valley,
                 Through the red-litten windows, see
               Vast forms that move fantastically
                 To a discordant melody; <p 147
               While, like a rapid ghastly river,
                 Through the pale door,
               A hideous throng rush out forever,
                 And laugh--but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a
train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's
which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men1
have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he
maintained it.  This opinion, in its general form, was that of the
sentience of all vegetable things.  But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain
conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization.  I lack words to express
the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion.  The belief,
however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the grey
stones of the home of his forefathers.  The conditions of the sentience
had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of
these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of
the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which
stood around-- above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this
arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to be seen, he said,
(and I here started as he spoke) in the gradual yet certain condensation
of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.  The
result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and
terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his
family, and which made him what I now saw him--what he was.  Such
opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books--the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in
strict keeping with this character of phantasm.  We pored together over
such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of
Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of

1 Watson, Dr Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of
Landaff. <p 148

Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the
Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the
Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the City of the Sun by
Campanella.  One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the
Directorium Inquisitorum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there
were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and
Aegipans, 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 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 purpose of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, <p
149 as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long
archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with
copper.  The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected.
Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved
upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin,
and looked upon the face of the tenant.  A striking similitude between
the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher,
divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I
learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that
sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between
them.  Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
not regard her unawed.  The disease which had thus entombed the lady in
the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and
the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so
terrible in death.  We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having
secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely
less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend.  His
ordinary manner had vanished.  His ordinary occupations were neglected
or forgotten.  He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,
and objectless step.  The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if
possible, a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had
utterly gone out.  The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard
no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually
characterized his utterance.  There were times, indeed, when I thought
his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret,
to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage.  At times,
again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries
of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an
attitude of the profoundest attention, as if <p 150 listening to some
imaginary sound.  It was no wonder that his condition terrified--that it
infected me.  I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the
wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the Lady Madeline within the
donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings.  Sleep came
not near my couch--while the hours waned and waned away.  I struggled to
reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me.  I endeavoured to
believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering
influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the dark and tattered
draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising
tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily
about the decorations of the bed.  But my efforts were fruitless.  An
irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there
sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.  Shaking
this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows,
and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber,
hearkened-- I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted
me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses
of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence.  Overpowered by an
intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on
my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition
into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the
apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention.  I presently recognized it as
that of Usher.  In an instant afterwards he rapped, with a gentle touch,
at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp.  His countenance was, as usual,
cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in
his eyes--an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour.  His
air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had
so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

'And you have not seen it?' he said abruptly, after having stared <p 151
about him for some moments in silence--'you have not then seen it?--but,
stay! you shall.'  Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp,
he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the
storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet.
It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one
wildly singular in its terror and its beauty.  A whirlwind had
apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent
and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding
density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of
the house) did not prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with
which they flew careering from all points against each other, without
passing away into the distance.  I say that even their exceeding density
did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of the moon
or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning.  But the
under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all
terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural
light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation
which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

'You must not--you shall not behold this!' said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
'These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the
rank miasma of the tarn.  Let us close this casement;--the air is
chilling and dangerous to your frame.  Here is one of your favourite
romances.  I will read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away
this terrible night together.'

The antique volume which I had taken up was the Mad Trist of Sir
Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in
sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth
and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty
and spiritual ideality of my friend.  It was, however, the only book
immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement
which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history
of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness
of the folly which I should read.  Could I have judged, indeed, by the
wild <p 152 overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or
apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have
congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,
the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission
into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by
force.  Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run
thus:

'And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace
outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so
cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and
hollow-sounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest.'

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused;
for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited
fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote
portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might
have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled
and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir
Launcelot had so particularly described.  It was, beyond doubt, the
coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid the
rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled
noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing,
surely, which should have interested or disturbed me.  I continued the
story:

'But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,
in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and
of a fiery tongue, which 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-- <p 153


     Who entered herein, a conquerer hath bin;

     Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

and Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,
which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so
horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to
close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like
whereof was never before heard.'

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,
I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found
it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,
protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact
counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's
unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in
which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion.  I was by no means certain that
he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange
alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his
demeanour.  From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought
round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber;
and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I saw
that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly.  His head had
dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the
wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.
The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea--for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway.
Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir
Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

'And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up
of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of
the way before him, and approached <p 154 valorously over the silver
pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in
sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon
the silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.'

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

'Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and have heard it.  Long-
-long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it--yet I
dared not--oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I dared not--I
dared not speak!  We have put her living in the tomb!  Said I not that
my senses were acute?  I now tell you that I heard her first feeble
movements in the hollow coffin.  I heard them--many, many days ago--yet
I dared not--I dared not speak!  And now--to-night--Ethelred--ha!
ha!--the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon,
and the clangour of the shield!--say, rather, the rending of her coffin,
and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles
within the coppered archway of the vault!  Oh whither shall I fly?  Will
she not be here anon?  Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste?
Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair?  Do I not distinguish that
heavy and horrible beating of her heart?  MADMAN!' here he sprang
furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the
effort he was giving up his soul--'MADMAN!  I TELL YOU THAT SHE NOW
STANDS WITHOUT THE DOOR!'

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker
pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their <p 155 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'.