CHAPTER 25

We now found ourselves in the wide and desolate Antarctic Ocean,

in a latitude exceeding eighty-four degrees, in a frail canoe,

and with no provision but the three turtles. The long polar

winter, too, could not be considered as far distant, and it

became necessary that we should deliberate well upon the course

to be pursued. There were six or seven islands in sight belonging

to the same group, and distant from each other about five or six

leagues; but upon neither of these had we any intention to

venture. In coming from the northward in the _Jane Guy_ we had

been gradually leaving behind us the severest regions of

ice—this, however little it maybe in accordance with the

generally received notions respecting the Antarctic, was a

fact—experience would not permit us to deny. To attempt,

therefore, getting back would be folly—especially at so late a

period of the season. Only one course seemed to be left open for

hope. We resolved to steer boldly to the southward, where there

was at least a probability of discovering other lands, and more

than a probability of finding a still milder climate.

So far we had found the Antarctic, like the Arctic Ocean,

peculiarly free from violent storms or immoderately rough water;

but our canoe was, at best, of frail structure, although large,

and we set busily to work with a view of rendering her as safe as

the limited means in our possession would admit. The body of the

boat was of no better material than bark—the bark of a tree

unknown. The ribs were of a tough osier, well adapted to the

purpose for which it was used. We had fifty feet room from stem

to stern, from four to six in breadth, and in depth throughout

four feet and a half-the boats thus differing vastly in shape

from those of any other inhabitants of the Southern Ocean with

whom civilized nations are acquainted. We never did believe them

the workmanship of the ignorant islanders who owned them; and

some days after this period discovered, by questioning our

captive, that they were in fact made by the natives of a group to

the southwest of the country where we found them, having fallen

accidentally into the hands of our barbarians. What we could do

for the security of our boat was very little indeed. Several wide

rents were discovered near both ends, and these we contrived to

patch up with pieces of woollen jacket. With the help of the

superfluous paddles, of which there were a great many, we erected

a kind of framework about the bow, so as to break the force of

any seas which might threaten to fill us in that quarter. We also

set up two paddle-blades for masts, placing them opposite each

other, one by each gunwale, thus saving the necessity of a yard.

To these masts we attached a sail made of our shirts-doing this

with some difficulty, as here we could get no assistance from our

prisoner whatever, although he had been willing enough to labor

in all the other operations. The sight of the linen seemed to

affect him in a very singular manner. He could not be prevailed

upon to touch it or go near it, shuddering when we attempted to

force him, and shrieking out, _“Tekeli-li!”_

Having completed our arrangements in regard to the security of

the canoe, we now set sail to the south-southeast for the

present, with the view of weathering the most southerly of the

group in sight. This being done, we turned the bow full to the

southward. The weather could by no means be considered

disagreeable. We had a prevailing and very gentle wind from the

northward, a smooth sea, and continual daylight. No ice whatever

was to be seen; _nor did I ever see one particle of this after

leaving the parallel of Bennet’s Islet._Indeed, the temperature

of the water was here far too warm for its existence in any

quantity. Having killed the largest of our tortoises, and

obtained from him not only food but a copious supply of water, we

continued on our course, without any incident of moment, for

perhaps seven or eight days, during which period we must have

proceeded a vast distance to the southward, as the wind blew

constantly with us, and a very strong current set continually in

the direction we were pursuing.

_March 1st_. {*7}-Many unusual phenomena now—indicated that we

were entering upon a region of novelty and wonder. A high range

of light gray vapor appeared constantly in the southern horizon,

flaring up occasionally in lofty streaks, now darting from east

to west, now from west to east, and again presenting a level and

uniform summit—in short, having all the wild variations of the

Aurora Borealis. The average height of this vapor, as apparent

from our station, was about twenty-five degrees. The temperature

of the sea seemed to be increasing momentarily, and there was a

very perceptible alteration in its color.

_March 2d._-To-day by repeated questioning of our captive, we

came to the knowledge of many particulars in regard to the island

of the massacre, its inhabitants, and customs—but with these how

can I now detain the reader? I may say, however, that we learned

there were eight islands in the group—that they were governed by

a common king, named _Tsalemon_or _Psalemoun,_who resided in one

of the smallest of the islands; that the black skins forming the

dress of the warriors came from an animal of huge size to be

found only in a valley near the court of the king—that the

inhabitants of the group fabricated no other boats than the

flat-bottomed rafts; the four canoes being all of the kind in

their possession, and, these having been obtained, by mere

accident, from some large island in the southwest—that his own

name was Nu-Nu—that he had no knowledge of Bennet’s Islet—and

that the appellation of the island he had left was Tsalal. The

commencement of the words _Tsalemon_and Tsalal was given with a

prolonged hissing sound, which we found it impossible to imitate,

even after repeated endeavors, and which was precisely the same

with the note of the black bittern we had eaten up on the summit

of the hill.

_March 3d._-The heat of the water was now truly remarkable, and

in color was undergoing a rapid change, being no longer

transparent, but of a milky consistency and hue. In our immediate

vicinity it was usually smooth, never so rough as to endanger the

canoe—but we were frequently surprised at perceiving, to our

right and left, at different distances, sudden and extensive

agitations of the surface; these, we at length noticed, were

always preceded by wild flickerings in the region of vapor to the

southward.

_March 4th._-To-day, with the view of widening our sail, the

breeze from the northward dying away perceptibly, I took from my

coat-pocket a white handkerchief. Nu-Nu was seated at my elbow,

and the linen accidentally flaring in his face, he became

violently affected with convulsions. These were succeeded by

drowsiness and stupor, and low murmurings of _“‘Tekeli-li!

Tekeli-li!”_

_March_5th.-The wind had entirely ceased, but it was evident that

we were still hurrying on to the southward, under the influence

of a powerful current. And now,—indeed, it would seem reasonable

that we should experience some alarm at the turn events were

taking—but we felt none. The countenance of Peters indicated

nothing of this nature, although it wore at times an expression I

could not fathom. The polar winter appeared to be coming on—but

coming without its terrors. I felt a numbness of body and mind—a

dreaminess of sensation but this was all.

_March 6th._-The gray vapor had now arisen many more degrees

above the horizon, and was gradually losing its grayness of tint.

The heat of the water was extreme, even unpleasant to the touch,

and its milky hue was more evident than ever. Today a violent

agitation of the water occurred very close to the canoe. It was

attended, as usual, with a wild flaring up of the vapor at its

summit, and a momentary division at its base. A fine white

powder, resembling ashes—but certainly not such—fell over the

canoe and over a large surface of the water, as the flickering

died away among the vapor and the commotion subsided in the sea.

Nu-Nu now threw himself on his face in the bottom of the boat,

and no persuasions could induce him to arise.

_March 7th._-This day we questioned Nu-Nu concerning the motives

of his countrymen in destroying our companions; but he appeared

to be too utterly overcome by terror to afford us any rational

reply. He still obstinately lay in the bottom of the boat; and,

upon reiterating the questions as to the motive, made use only of

idiotic gesticulations, such as raising with his forefinger the

upper lip, and displaying the teeth which lay beneath it. These

were black. We had never before seen the teeth of an inhabitant

of Tsalal.

_March 8th._-To-day there floated by us one of the white animals

whose appearance upon the beach at Tsalal had occasioned so wild

a commotion among the savages. I would have picked it up, but

there came over me a sudden listlessness, and I forbore. The heat

of the water still increased, and the hand could no longer be

endured within it. Peters spoke little, and I knew not what to

think of his apathy. Nu-Nu breathed, and no more.

_March 9th._-The whole ashy material fell now continually around

us, and in vast quantities. The range of vapor to the southward

had arisen prodigiously in the horizon, and began to assume more

distinctness of form. I can liken it to nothing but a limitless

cataract, rolling silently into the sea from some immense and

far-distant rampart in the heaven. The gigantic curtain ranged

along the whole extent of the southern horizon. It emitted no

sound.

_March 21st._-A sullen darkness now hovered above us—but from out

the milky depths of the ocean a luminous glare arose, and stole

up along the bulwarks of the boat. We were nearly overwhelmed by

the white ashy shower which settled upon us and upon the canoe,

but melted into the water as it fell. The summit of the cataract

was utterly lost in the dimness and the distance. Yet we were

evidently approaching it with a hideous velocity. At intervals

there were visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents, and

from out these rents, within which was a chaos of flitting and

indistinct images, there came rushing and mighty, but soundless

winds, tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course.

_March 22d._-The darkness had materially increased, relieved only

by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain

before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew

continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the

eternal _Tekeli-li!_as they retreated from our vision. Hereupon

Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him we

found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of

the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But

there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far

larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue

of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the

snow.

NOTE

THE circumstances connected with the late sudden and distressing

death of Mr. Pym are already well known to the public through the

medium of the daily press. It is feared that the few remaining

chapters which were to have completed his narrative, and which

were retained by him, while the above were in type, for the

purpose of revision, have been irrecoverably lost through the

accident by which he perished himself. This, however, may prove

not to be the case, and the papers, if ultimately found, will be

given to the public.

No means have been left untried to remedy the deficiency. The

gentleman whose name is mentioned in the preface, and who, from

the statement there made, might be supposed able to fill the

vacuum, has declined the task—this, for satisfactory reasons

connected with the general inaccuracy of the details afforded

him, and his disbelief in the entire truth of the latter portions

of the narration. Peters, from whom some information might be

expected, is still alive, and a resident of Illinois, but cannot

be met with at present. He may hereafter be found, and will, no

doubt, afford material for a conclusion of Mr. Pym’s account.

The loss of two or three final chapters (for there were but two

or three) is the more deeply to be regretted, as it can not be

doubted they contained matter relative to the Pole itself, or at

least to regions in its very near proximity; and as, too, the

statements of the author in relation to these regions may shortly

be verified or contradicted by means of the governmental

expedition now preparing for the Southern Ocean.

On one point in the narrative some remarks may well be offered;

and it would afford the writer of this appendix much pleasure if

what he may here observe should have a tendency to throw credit,

in any degree, upon the very singular pages now published. We

allude to the chasms found in the island of Tsalal, and to the

whole of the figures upon pages 245-47 {of the printed

edition—ed.}.

(Note: No figures were included with this text)

Mr. Pym has given the figures of the chasms without comment, and

speaks decidedly of the _indentures_found at the extremity of the

most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful

resemblance to alphabetical characters, and, in short, as being

positively _not such. _This assertion is made in a manner so

simple, and sustained by a species of demonstration so conclusive

(viz., the fitting of the projections of the fragments found

among the dust into the indentures upon the wall), that we are

forced to believe the writer in earnest; and no reasonable reader

should suppose otherwise. But as the facts in relation to all the

figures are most singular (especially when taken in connection

with statements made in the body of the narrative), it may be as

well to say a word or two concerning them all—this, too, the more

especially as the facts in question have, beyond doubt, escaped

the attention of Mr. Poe.

Figure 1, then, figure 2, figure 3, and figure 5, when conjoined

with one another in the precise order which the chasms themselves

presented, and when deprived of the small lateral branches or

arches (which, it will be remembered, served only as a means of

communication between the main chambers, and were of totally

distinct character), constitute an Ethiopian verbal root—the root

“To be shady,’—whence all the inflections of shadow or darkness.

In regard to the “left or most northwardly” of the indentures in

figure 4, it is more than probable that the opinion of Peters was

correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the

work of art, and intended as the representation of a human form.

The delineation is before the reader, and he may, or may not,

perceive the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the

indentures afford strong confirmation of Peters’ idea. The upper

range is evidently the Arabic verbal root “To be white,” whence

all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range

is not so immediately perspicuous. The characters are somewhat

broken and disjointed; nevertheless, it can not be doubted that,

in their perfect state, they formed the full Egyptian word, “The

region of the south.” It should be observed that these

interpretations confirm the opinion of Peters in regard to the

“most northwardly” of the figures. The arm is outstretched toward

the south.

Conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and

exciting conjecture. They should be regarded, perhaps, in

connection with some of the most faintly detailed incidents of

the narrative; although in no visible manner is this chain of

connection complete. Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted

natives of Tsalal upon discovering the carcase of the

_white_animal picked up at sea. This also was the shuddering

exclamatives of Tsalal upon discovering the carcass of the

_white_materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also was the

shriek of the swift-flying, _white, _and gigantic birds which

issued from the vapory _white_curtain of the South. Nothing

_white_was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the

subsequent voyage to the region beyond. It is not impossible that

“Tsalal,” the appellation of the island of the chasms, may be

found, upon minute philological scrutiny, to betray either some

alliance with the chasms themselves, or some reference to the

Ethiopian characters so mysteriously written in their windings.

_“I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the

dust within the rock.”_

NOTES TO THE THIRD VOLUME

{*1} Whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil-tanks—why

the _Grampus_ was not I have never been able to ascertain.

{*2} The case of the brig _Polly_, of Boston, is one so much in

point, and her fate, in many respects, so remarkably similar to

our own, that I cannot forbear alluding to it here. This vessel,

of one hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed from Boston, with a

cargo of lumber and provisions, for Santa Croix, on the twelfth

of December, 1811, under the command of Captain Casneau. There

were eight souls on board besides the captain—the mate, four

seamen, and the cook, together with a Mr. Hunt, and a negro girl

belonging to him. On the fifteenth, having cleared the shoal of

Georges, she sprung a leak in a gale of wind from the southeast,

and was finally capsized; but, the masts going by the board, she

afterward righted. They remained in this situation, without fire,

and with very little provision, for the period of one hundred and

ninety-one days (from December the fifteenth to June the

twentieth), when Captain Casneau and Samuel Badger, the only

survivors, were taken off the wreck by the Fame, of Hull, Captain

Featherstone, bound home from Rio Janeiro. When picked up, they

were in latitude 28 degrees N., longitude 13 degrees W., having

drifted above two thousand miles! On the ninth of July the Fame

fell in with the brig Dromero, Captain Perkins, who landed the

two sufferers in Kennebeck. The narrative from which we gather

these details ends in the following words:

“It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast

distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not

be discovered all this time. They were passed by more than a

dozen sail, one of which came so nigh them that they could

distinctly see the people on deck and on the rigging looking at

them; but, to the inexpressible disappointment of the starving

and freezing men, they stifled the dictates of compassion,

hoisted sail, and cruelly abandoned them to their fate.”

{*3} Among the vessels which at various times have professed to

meet with the Auroras may be mentioned the ship San Miguel, in

1769; the ship Aurora, in 1774; the brig Pearl, in 1779; and the

ship Dolores, in 1790. They all agree in giving the mean latitude

fifty-three degrees south.

{*4} The terms morning and evening, which I have made use of to

avoid confusion in my narrative, as far as possible, must not, of

course, be taken in their ordinary sense. For a long time past we

had had no night at all, the daylight being continual. The dates

throughout are according to nautical time, and the bearing must

be understood as per compass. I would also remark, in this place,

that I cannot, in the first portion of what is here written,

pretend to strict accuracy in respect to dates, or latitudes and

longitudes, having kept no regular journal until after the period

of which this first portion treats. In many instances I have

relied altogether upon memory.

{*5} This day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the

south several huge wreaths of the grayish vapour I have spoken

of.

{*6} The marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light colored

substances of any kind upon the island.

{*7}For obvious reasons I cannot pretend to strict accuracy in

these dates. They are given principally with a view to perspicity

of narrative, and as set down in my pencil memorandum.

LIGEIA

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the

mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great

will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth

not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save

only through the weakness of his feeble will.—_Joseph Glanvill_.

I cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely

where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia. Long years

have since elapsed, and my memory is feeble through much

suffering. Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points to mind,

because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare

learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the

thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language,

made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily

progressive that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I

believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large,

old, decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family—I have surely

heard her speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be

doubted. Ligeia! Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than

all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it

is by that sweet word alone—by Ligeia—that I bring before mine

eyes in fancy the image of her who is no more. And now, while I

write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never known the

paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who

became the partner of my studies, and finally the wife of my

bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia? or was

it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no

inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own—a

wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate

devotion? I but indistinctly recall the fact itself—what wonder

that I have utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated

or attended it? And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is

entitled _Romance_—if ever she, the wan and the misty-winged

_Ashtophet_ of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as they tell, over

marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me

not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall,

somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I

would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of

her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of

her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made

aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music

of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my

shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was

the radiance of an opium-dream—an airy and spirit-lifting vision

more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the

slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her features were

not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to

worship in the classical labors of the heathen. “There is no

exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of

all the forms and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in

the proportion.” Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia

were not of a classic regularity—although I perceived that her

loveliness was indeed “exquisite,” and felt that there was much

of “strangeness” pervading it, yet I have tried in vain to detect

the irregularity and to trace home my own perception of “the

strange.” I examined the contour of the lofty and pale

forehead—it was faultless—how cold indeed that word when applied

to a majesty so divine!—the skin rivalling the purest ivory, the

commanding extent and repose, the gentle prominence of the

regions above the temples; and then the raven-black, the glossy,

the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses, setting forth the

full force of the Homeric epithet, “hyacinthine!” I looked at the

delicate outlines of the nose—and nowhere but in the graceful

medallions of the Hebrews had I beheld a similar perfection.

There were the same luxurious smoothness of surface, the same

scarcely perceptible tendency to the aquiline, the same

harmoniously curved nostrils speaking the free spirit. I regarded

the sweet mouth. Here was indeed the triumph of all things

heavenly—the magnificent turn of the short upper lip—the soft,

voluptuous slumber of the under—the dimples which sported, and

the color which spoke—the teeth glancing back, with a brilliancy

almost startling, every ray of the holy light which fell upon

them in her serene and placid, yet most exultingly radiant of all

smiles. I scrutinized the formation of the chin—and here, too, I

found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty,

the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek—the contour which

the god Apollo revealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes, the son of

the Athenian. And then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia.

For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique. It might have

been, too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to

which Lord Verulam alludes. They were, I must believe, far larger

than the ordinary eyes of our own race. They were even fuller

than the fullest of the gazelle eyes of the tribe of the valley

of Nourjahad. Yet it was only at intervals—in moments of intense

excitement—that this peculiarity became more than slightly

noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty—in my

heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps—the beauty of beings either

above or apart from the earth—the beauty of the fabulous Houri of

the Turk. The hue of the orbs was the most brilliant of black,

and, far over them, hung jetty lashes of great length. The brows,

slightly irregular in outline, had the same tint. The

“strangeness,” however, which I found in the eyes, was of a

nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the

brilliancy of the features, and must, after all, be referred to

the expression. Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast

latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of

the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long

hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a

midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that

something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far

within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed

with a passion to discover. Those eyes! those large, those

shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda,

and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

There is no point, among the many incomprehensible anomalies of

the science of mind, more thrillingly exciting than the

fact—never, I believe, noticed in the schools—that, in our

endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often

find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being

able, in the end, to remember. And thus how frequently, in my

intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes, have I felt approaching the

full knowledge of their expression—felt it approaching—yet not

quite be mine—and so at length entirely depart! And (strange, oh

strangest mystery of all!) I found, in the commonest objects of

the universe, a circle of analogies to that expression. I mean to

say that, subsequently to the period when Ligeia’s beauty passed

into my spirit, there dwelling as in a shrine, I derived, from

many existences in the material world, a sentiment such as I felt

always aroused within me by her large and luminous orbs. Yet not

the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even

steadily view it. I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in

the survey of a rapidly-growing vine—in the contemplation of a

moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have

felt it in the ocean—in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it

in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two

stars in heaven—(one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude,

double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra)

in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the

feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from

stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from

books. Among innumerable other instances, I well remember

something in a volume of Joseph Glanvill, which (perhaps merely

from its quaintness—who shall say?) never failed to inspire me

with the sentiment: “And the will therein lieth, which dieth not.

Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is

but a great will pervading all things by nature of its

intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death

utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.”

Length of years, and subsequent reflection, have enabled me to

trace, indeed, some remote connection between this passage in the

English moralist and a portion of the character of Ligeia. An

intensity in thought, action, or speech, was possibly, in her, a

result, or at least an index, of that gigantic volition which,

during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more

immediate evidence of its existence. Of all the women whom I have

ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was

the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern

passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by

the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted

and appalled me—by the almost magical melody, modulation,

distinctness and placidity of her very low voice—and by the

fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her

manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually

uttered.

I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense—such as I

have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she

deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in

regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her

at fault. Indeed upon any theme of the most admired, because

simply the most abstruse of the boasted erudition of the academy,

have I ever found Ligeia at fault? How singularly—how

thrillingly, this one point in the nature of my wife has forced

itself, at this late period only, upon my attention! I said her

knowledge was such as I have never known in woman—but where

breathes the man who has traversed, and successfully, all the

wide areas of moral, physical, and mathematical science? I saw

not then what I now clearly perceive, that the acquisitions of

Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently

aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with a

child-like confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world

of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied

during the earlier years of our marriage. With how vast a

triumph—with how vivid a delight—with how much of all that is

ethereal in hope did I feel, as she bent over me in studies but

little sought—but less known—that delicious vista by slow degrees

expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden

path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too

divinely precious not to be forbidden!

How poignant, then, must have been the grief with which, after

some years, I beheld my well-grounded expectations take wings to

themselves and fly away! Without Ligeia I was but as a child

groping benighted. Her presence, her readings alone, rendered

vividly luminous the many mysteries of the transcendentalism in

which we were immersed. Wanting the radiant lustre of her eyes,

letters, lambent and golden, grew duller than Saturnian lead. And

now those eyes shone less and less frequently upon the pages over

which I pored. Ligeia grew ill. The wild eyes blazed with a

too—too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the

transparent waxen hue of the grave; and the blue veins upon the

lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the

gentle emotion. I saw that she must die—and I struggled

desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael. And the struggles of

the passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic

than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to impress

me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without

its terrors; but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just

idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with

the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I

would have soothed—I would have reasoned; but, in the intensity

of her wild desire for life,—for life—but for life—solace and

reason were the uttermost folly. Yet not until the last instance,

amid the most convulsive writhings of her fierce spirit, was

shaken the external placidity of her demeanor. Her voice grew

more gentle—grew more low—yet I would not wish to dwell upon the

wild meaning of the quietly uttered words. My brain reeled as I

hearkened, entranced, to a melody more than mortal—to assumptions

and aspirations which mortality had never before known.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have

been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have

reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only, was I fully

impressed with the strength of her affection. For long hours,

detaining my hand, would she pour out before me the overflowing

of a heart whose more than passionate devotion amounted to

idolatry. How had I deserved to be so blessed by such

confessions?—how had I deserved to be so cursed with the removal

of my beloved in the hour of her making them? But upon this

subject I cannot bear to dilate. Let me say only, that in

Ligeia’s more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! all

unmerited, all unworthily bestowed, I at length recognized the

principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the

life which was now fleeing so rapidly away. It is this wild

longing—it is this eager vehemence of desire for life—but for

life—that I have no power to portray—no utterance capable of

expressing.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, beckoning me,

peremptorily, to her side, she bade me repeat certain verses

composed by herself not many days before. I obeyed her. They were

these:

Lo! ’tis a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly;

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama!—oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased forever more,

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness and more of Sin

And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!

And over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

And the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

“O God!” half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending

her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of

these lines—“O God! O Divine Father!—shall these things be

undeviatingly so?—shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are

we not part and parcel in Thee? Who—who knoweth the mysteries of

the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels,

nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his

feeble will.”

And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white

arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as

she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low

murmur from her lips. I bent to them my ear and distinguished,

again, the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill—“Man doth

not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only

through the weakness of his feeble will.”

She died: and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no

longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and

decaying city by the Rhine. I had no lack of what the world calls

wealth. Ligeia had brought me far more, very far more than

ordinarily falls to the lot of mortals. After a few months,

therefore, of weary and aimless wandering, I purchased, and put

in some repair, an abbey, which I shall not name, in one of the

wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy

and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of

the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories

connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of

utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and

unsocial region of the country. Yet although the external abbey,

with its verdant decay hanging about it, suffered but little

alteration, I gave way, with a child-like perversity, and

perchance with a faint hope of alleviating my sorrows, to a

display of more than regal magnificence within. For such follies,

even in childhood, I had imbibed a taste and now they came back

to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of

incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and

fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild

cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of

tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of

opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my

dreams. But these absurdities I must not pause to detail. Let me

speak only of that one chamber, ever accursed, whither in a

moment of mental alienation, I led from the altar as my bride—as

the successor of the unforgotten Ligeia—the fair-haired and

blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion, of Tremaine.

There is no individual portion of the architecture and decoration

of that bridal chamber which is not now visibly before me. Where

were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through

thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of an

apartment so bedecked, a maiden and a daughter so beloved? I have

said that I minutely remember the details of the chamber—yet I am

sadly forgetful on topics of deep moment—and here there was no

system, no keeping, in the fantastic display, to take hold upon

the memory. The room lay in a high turret of the castellated

abbey, was pentagonal in shape, and of capacious size. Occupying

the whole southern face of the pentagon was the sole window—an

immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice—a single pane, and

tinted of a leaden hue, so that the rays of either the sun or

moon, passing through it, fell with a ghastly lustre on the

objects within. Over the upper portion of this huge window,

extended the trellice-work of an aged vine, which clambered up

the massy walls of the turret. The ceiling, of gloomy-looking

oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with

the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic,

semi-Druidical device. From out the most central recess of this

melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with

long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in

pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there

writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality,

a continual succession of parti-colored fires.

Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were

in various stations about—and there was the couch, too—bridal

couch—of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony,

with a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the

chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite,

from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged

lids full of immemorial sculpture. But in the draping of the

apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all. The lofty walls,

gigantic in height—even unproportionably so—were hung from summit

to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking

tapestry—tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet

on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed,

as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the

curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the

richest cloth of gold. It was spotted all over, at irregular

intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and

wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But

these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only

when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now

common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of

antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering

the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but

upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and

step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he

saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly

forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in

the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was

vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong

continual current of wind behind the draperies—giving a hideous

and uneasy animation to the whole.

In halls such as these—in a bridal chamber such as this—I passed,

with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first

month of our marriage—passed them with but little disquietude.

That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—that she

shunned me and loved me but little—I could not help perceiving;

but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with

a hatred belonging more to demon than to man. My memory flew

back, (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the

beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in

recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her

ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now,

then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the

fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was

habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would call

aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among

the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the

wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my

longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she

had abandoned—ah, could it be forever?—upon the earth.

About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the

Lady Rowena was attacked with sudden illness, from which her

recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her

nights uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she

spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about the chamber of the

turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of

her fancy, or perhaps in the phantasmagoric influences of the

chamber itself. She became at length convalescent—finally well.

Yet but a brief period elapsed, ere a second more violent

disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering; and from this

attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether

recovered. Her illnesses were, after this epoch, of alarming

character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the

knowledge and the great exertions of her physicians. With the

increase of the chronic disease which had thus, apparently, taken

too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human

means, I could not fail to observe a similar increase in the

nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by

trivial causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently

and pertinaciously, of the sounds—of the slight sounds—and of the

unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly

alluded.

One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this

distressing subject with more than usual emphasis upon my

attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I

had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague

terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by the

side of her ebony bed, upon one of the ottomans of India. She

partly arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of sounds

which she then heard, but which I could not hear—of motions which

she then saw, but which I could not perceive. The wind was

rushing hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to show her

(what, let me confess it, I could not all believe) that those

almost inarticulate breathings, and those very gentle variations

of the figures upon the wall, were but the natural effects of

that customary rushing of the wind. But a deadly pallor,

overspreading her face, had proved to me that my exertions to

reassure her would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting, and

no attendants were within call. I remembered where was deposited

a decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her

physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But,

as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances

of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that

some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my

person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the

very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow—a

faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect—such as might be

fancied for the shadow of a shade. But I was wild with the

excitement of an immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these

things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena. Having found the

wine, I recrossed the chamber, and poured out a gobletful, which

I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partially

recovered, however, and took the vessel herself, while I sank

upon an ottoman near me, with my eyes fastened upon her person.

It was then that I became distinctly aware of a gentle footfall

upon the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second thereafter,

as Rowena was in the act of raising the wine to her lips, I saw,

or may have dreamed that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if

from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three

or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid. If

this I saw—not so Rowena. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly,

and I forbore to speak to her of a circumstance which must, after

all, I considered, have been but the suggestion of a vivid

imagination, rendered morbidly active by the terror of the lady,

by the opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately

subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the

worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the

third subsequent night, the hands of her menials prepared her for

the tomb, and on the fourth, I sat alone, with her shrouded body,

in that fantastic chamber which had received her as my bride.

Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me.

I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the

room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the

writhing of the parti-colored fires in the censer overhead. My

eyes then fell, as I called to mind the circumstances of a former

night, to the spot beneath the glare of the censer where I had

seen the faint traces of the shadow. It was there, however, no

longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances

to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. Then rushed upon me

a thousand memories of Ligeia—and then came back upon my heart,

with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that

unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded.

The night waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter thoughts

of the one only and supremely beloved, I remained gazing upon the

body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I

had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very

distinct, startled me from my revery. I _felt_ that it came from

the bed of ebony—the bed of death. I listened in an agony of

superstitious terror—but there was no repetition of the sound. I

strained my vision to detect any motion in the corpse—but there

was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been

deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my soul was

awakened within me. I resolutely and perseveringly kept my

attention riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed before any

circumstance occurred tending to throw light upon the mystery. At

length it became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and barely

noticeable tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and

along the sunken small veins of the eyelids. Through a species of

unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality

has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my heart cease

to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a sense of duty

finally operated to restore my self-possession. I could no longer

doubt that we had been precipitate in our preparations—that

Rowena still lived. It was necessary that some immediate exertion

be made; yet the turret was altogether apart from the portion of

the abbey tenanted by the servants—there were none within call—I

had no means of summoning them to my aid without leaving the room

for many minutes—and this I could not venture to do. I therefore

struggled alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit ill

hovering. In a short period it was certain, however, that a

relapse had taken place; the color disappeared from both eyelid

and cheek, leaving a wanness even more than that of marble; the

lips became doubly shrivelled and pinched up in the ghastly

expression of death; a repulsive clamminess and coldness

overspread rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual

rigorous illness immediately supervened. I fell back with a

shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly

aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of

Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed when (could it be possible?) I was a second

time aware of some vague sound issuing from the region of the

bed. I listened—in extremity of horror. The sound came again—it

was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw—distinctly saw—a tremor

upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a

bright line of the pearly teeth. Amazement now struggled in my

bosom with the profound awe which had hitherto reigned there

alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my reason wandered;

and it was only by a violent effort that I at length succeeded in

nerving myself to the task which duty thus once more had pointed

out. There was now a partial glow upon the forehead and upon the

cheek and throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the whole frame;

there was even a slight pulsation at the heart. The lady lived;

and with redoubled ardor I betook myself to the task of

restoration. I chafed and bathed the temples and the hands, and

used every exertion which experience, and no little medical

reading, could suggest. But in vain. Suddenly, the color fled,

the pulsation ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the

dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole body took upon

itself the icy chilliness, the livid hue, the intense rigidity,

the sunken outline, and all the loathsome peculiarities of that

which has been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia—and again, (what marvel

that I shudder while I write?), again there reached my ears a low

sob from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I minutely

detail the unspeakable horrors of that night? Why shall I pause

to relate how, time after time, until near the period of the gray

dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated; how each

terrific relapse was only into a sterner and apparently more

irredeemable death; how each agony wore the aspect of a struggle

with some invisible foe; and how each struggle was succeeded by I

know not what of wild change in the personal appearance of the

corpse? Let me hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who

had been dead, once again stirred—and now more vigorously than

hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution more appalling in

its utter hopelessness than any. I had long ceased to struggle or

to move, and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a

helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of which extreme

awe was perhaps the least terrible, the least consuming. The

corpse, I repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than before.

The hues of life flushed up with unwonted energy into the

countenance—the limbs relaxed—and, save that the eyelids were yet

pressed heavily together, and that the bandages and draperies of

the grave still imparted their charnel character to the figure, I

might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed shaken off, utterly,

the fetters of Death. But if this idea was not, even then,

altogether adopted, I could at least doubt no longer, when,

arising from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with closed

eyes, and with the manner of one bewildered in a dream, the thing

that was enshrouded advanced boldly and palpably into the middle

of the apartment.

I trembled not—I stirred not—for a crowd of unutterable fancies

connected with the air, the stature, the demeanor of the figure,

rushing hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed—had chilled me

into stone. I stirred not—but gazed upon the apparition. There

was a mad disorder in my thoughts—a tumult unappeasable. Could

it, indeed, be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it

indeed be Rowena at all—the fair-haired, the blue-eyed Lady

Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why, why should I doubt it? The

bandage lay heavily about the mouth—but then might it not be the

mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine? And the cheeks—there

were the roses as in her noon of life—yes, these might indeed be

the fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And the chin,

with its dimples, as in health, might it not be hers?—but had she

then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness

seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her

feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head,

unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it, and

there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber,

huge masses of long and dishevelled hair; _it was blacker than

the raven wings of the midnight!_ And now slowly opened the eyes

of the figure which stood before me. “Here then, at least,” I

shrieked aloud, “can I never—can I never be mistaken—these are

the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love—of the

Lady—of the LADY LIGEIA.”

MORELLA

Itself, by itself, solely, one everlasting, and single.

—PLATO—_Sympos_.

With a feeling of deep yet most singular affection I regarded my

friend Morella. Thrown by accident into her society many years

ago, my soul from our first meeting, burned with fires it had

never before known; but the fires were not of Eros, and bitter

and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I

could in no manner define their unusual meaning or regulate their

vague intensity. Yet we met; and fate bound us together at the

altar; and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She,

however, shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone

rendered me happy. It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness

to dream.

Morella’s erudition was profound. As I hope to live, her talents

were of no common order—her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt

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

found that, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, she

placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are

usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature.

These, for what reason I could not imagine, were her favourite

and constant study—and that in process of time they became my

own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence

of habit and example.

In all this, if I err not, my reason had little to do. My

convictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by

the ideal, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to

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

or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself

implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an

unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. And

then—then, when, poring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden

spirit enkindling within me—would Morella place her cold hand

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

low, singular words, whose strange meaning burned themselves in

upon my memory. And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her

side, and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its

melody was tainted with terror, and there fell a shadow upon my

soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too

unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and

the most beautiful became the most hideous, as Hinnon became

Ge-Henna.

It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those

disquisitions which, growing out of the volumes I have mentioned,

formed, for so long a time, almost the sole conversation of

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

theological morality they will be readily conceived, and by the

unlearned they would, at all events, be little understood. The

wild Pantheism of Fichte; the modified Paliggenedia of the

Pythagoreans; and, above all, the doctrines of Identity as urged

by Schelling, were generally the points of discussion presenting

the most of beauty to the imaginative Morella. That identity

which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to

consist in the saneness of rational being. And since by person we

understand an intelligent essence having reason, and since there

is a consciousness which always accompanies thinking, it is this

which makes us all to be that which we call _ourselves_—thereby

distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us our

personal identity. But the _principium indivduationis_, the

notion of that identity _which at death is or is not lost

forever_—was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense

interest; not more from the perplexing and exciting nature of its

consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner in which

Morella mentioned them.

But, indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my

wife’s manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the

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

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

this, but did not upbraid; she seemed conscious of my weakness or

my folly, and, smiling, called it Fate. She seemed, also,

conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation

of my regard; but she gave me no hint or token of its nature. Yet

was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson spot

settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale

forehead became prominent; and one instant my nature melted into

pity, but in, next I met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then

my soul sickened and became giddy with the giddiness of one who

gazes downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss.

Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming

desire for the moment of Morella’s decease? I did; but the

fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days—for

many weeks and irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained

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

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

bitter moments, which seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her

gentle life declined—like shadows in the dying of the day.

But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven,

Morella called me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all

the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich

October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had

surely fallen.

“It is a day of days,” she said, as I approached; “a day of all

days either to live or die. It is a fair day for the sons of

earth and life—ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and

death!”

I kissed her forehead, and she continued:

“I am dying, yet shall I live.”

“Morella!”

“The days have never been when thou couldst love me—but her whom

in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.”

“Morella!”

“I repeat that I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that

affection—ah, how little!—which thou didst feel for me, Morella.

And when my spirit departs shall the child live—thy child and

mine, Morella’s. But thy days shall be days of sorrow—that sorrow

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

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

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

twice in a year. Thou shalt no longer, then, play the Teian with

time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou shalt

bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as do the Moslemin

at Mecca.”

“Morella!” I cried, “Morella! how knowest thou this?” but she

turned away her face upon the pillow and a slight tremor coming

over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more.

Yet, as she had foretold, her child, to which in dying she had

given birth, which breathed not until the mother breathed no

more, her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in

stature and intellect, and was the perfect resemblance of her who

had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent than I had

believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth.

But, ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened,

and gloom, and horror, and grief swept over it in clouds. I said

the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange,

indeed, was her rapid increase in bodily size—but terrible, oh!

terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while

watching the development of her mental being. Could it be

otherwise, when I daily discovered in the conceptions of the

child the adult powers and faculties of the woman?—when the

lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy? and when the

wisdom or the passions of maturity I found hourly gleaming from

its full and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became

evident to my appalled senses—when I could no longer hide it from

my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions which trembled

to receive it—is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of a

nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or that my

thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling

theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of

the world a being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the

rigorous seclusion of my home, watched with an agonizing anxiety

over all which concerned the beloved.

And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her

holy, and mild, and eloquent face, and poured over her maturing

form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in

the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And hourly

grew darker these shadows of similitude, and more full, and more

definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in

their aspect. For that her smile was like her mother’s I could

bear; but then I shuddered at its too perfect _identity_—that her

eyes were like Morella’s I could endure; but then they, too,

often looked down into the depths of my soul with Morella’s own

intense and bewildering meaning. And in the contour of the high

forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wan

fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the sad musical

tones of her speech, and above all—oh! above all—in the phrases

and expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the

living, I found food for consuming thought and horror—for a worm

that _would_ not die.

Thus passed away two lustra of her life, and as yet my daughter

remained nameless upon the earth. “My child,” and “my love,” were

the designations usually prompted by a father’s affection, and

the rigid seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse.

Morella’s name died with her at her death. Of the mother I had

never spoken to the daughter;—it was impossible to speak. Indeed,

during the brief period of her existence, the latter had received

no impressions from the outward world, save such as might have

been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. But at length

the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and

agitated condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my

destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated for a name. And

many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old and modern times,

of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips, with

many, many fair titles of the gentle, and the happy, and the

good. What prompted me then to disturb the memory of the buried

dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound, which in its

very recollection was wont to make ebb the purple blood in

torrents from the temples to the heart? What fiend spoke from the

recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the

silence of the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man

the syllables—Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the

features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as

starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy

eyes from the earth to heaven, and falling prostrate on the black

slabs of our ancestral vault, responded—“I am here!”

Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell those few simple sounds

within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into

my brain. Years—years may pass away, but the memory of that

epoch—never! Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the

vine—but the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and

day. And I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of

my fate faded from heaven, and therefore the earth grew dark, and

its figures passed by me like flitting shadows, and among them

all I beheld only—Morella. The winds of the firmament breathed

but one sound within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea

murmured evermore—Morella. But she died; and with my own hands I

bore her to the tomb; and I laughed with a long and bitter laugh

as I found no traces of the first in the charnel where I laid the

second, Morella.

A TALE OF THE RAGGED MOUNTAINS

During the fall of the year 1827, while residing near

Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the acquaintance of

Mr. Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every

respect, and excited in me a profound interest and curiosity. I

found it impossible to comprehend him either in his moral or his

physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory

account. Whence he came, I never ascertained. Even about his

age—although I call him a young gentleman—there was something

which perplexed me in no little degree. He certainly seemed

young—and he made a point of speaking about his youth—yet there

were moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining

him a hundred years of age. But in no regard was he more peculiar

than in his personal appearance. He was singularly tall and thin.

He stooped much. His limbs were exceedingly long and emaciated.

His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was absolutely

bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his teeth were

more wildly uneven, although sound, than I had ever before seen

teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile, however, was

by no means unpleasing, as might be supposed; but it had no

variation whatever. It was one of profound melancholy—of a

phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large,

and round like those of a cat. The pupils, too, upon any

accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or

dilation, just such as is observed in the feline tribe. In

moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost

inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected

but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or the sun; yet

their ordinary condition was so totally vapid, filmy, and dull as

to convey the idea of the eyes of a long-interred corpse.

These peculiarities of person appeared to cause him much

annoyance, and he was continually alluding to them in a sort of

half explanatory, half apologetic strain, which, when I first

heard it, impressed me very painfully. I soon, however, grew

accustomed to it, and my uneasiness wore off. It seemed to be his

design rather to insinuate than directly to assert that,

physically, he had not always been what he was—that a long series

of neuralgic attacks had reduced him from a condition of more

than usual personal beauty, to that which I saw. For many years

past he had been attended by a physician, named Templeton—an old

gentleman, perhaps seventy years of age—whom he had first

encountered at Saratoga, and from whose attention, while there,

he either received, or fancied that he received, great benefit.

The result was that Bedloe, who was wealthy, had made an

arrangement with Dr. Templeton, by which the latter, in

consideration of a liberal annual allowance, had consented to

devote his time and medical experience exclusively to the care of

the invalid.

Doctor Templeton had been a traveller in his younger days, and at

Paris had become a convert, in great measure, to the doctrines of

Mesmer. It was altogether by means of magnetic remedies that he

had succeeded in alleviating the acute pains of his patient; and

this success had very naturally inspired the latter with a

certain degree of confidence in the opinions from which the

remedies had been educed. The Doctor, however, like all

enthusiasts, had struggled hard to make a thorough convert of his

pupil, and finally so far gained his point as to induce the

sufferer to submit to numerous experiments. By a frequent

repetition of these, a result had arisen, which of late days has

become so common as to attract little or no attention, but which,

at the period of which I write, had very rarely been known in

America. I mean to say, that between Doctor Templeton and Bedloe

there had grown up, little by little, a very distinct and

strongly marked rapport, or magnetic relation. I am not prepared

to assert, however, that this rapport extended beyond the limits

of the simple sleep-producing power, but this power itself had

attained great intensity. At the first attempt to induce the

magnetic somnolency, the mesmerist entirely failed. In the fifth

or sixth he succeeded very partially, and after long continued

effort. Only at the twelfth was the triumph complete. After this

the will of the patient succumbed rapidly to that of the

physician, so that, when I first became acquainted with the two,

sleep was brought about almost instantaneously by the mere

volition of the operator, even when the invalid was unaware of

his presence. It is only now, in the year 1845, when similar

miracles are witnessed daily by thousands, that I dare venture to

record this apparent impossibility as a matter of serious fact.

The temperature of Bedloe was, in the highest degree sensitive,

excitable, enthusiastic. His imagination was singularly vigorous

and creative; and no doubt it derived additional force from the

habitual use of morphine, which he swallowed in great quantity,

and without which he would have found it impossible to exist. It

was his practice to take a very large dose of it immediately

after breakfast each morning—or, rather, immediately after a cup

of strong coffee, for he ate nothing in the forenoon—and then set

forth alone, or attended only by a dog, upon a long ramble among

the chain of wild and dreary hills that lie westward and

southward of Charlottesville, and are there dignified by the

title of the Ragged Mountains.

Upon a dim, warm, misty day, toward the close of November, and

during the strange interregnum of the seasons which in America is

termed the Indian Summer, Mr. Bedloe departed as usual for the

hills. The day passed, and still he did not return.

About eight o’clock at night, having become seriously alarmed at

his protracted absence, we were about setting out in search of

him, when he unexpectedly made his appearance, in health no worse

than usual, and in rather more than ordinary spirits. The account

which he gave of his expedition, and of the events which had

detained him, was a singular one indeed.

“You will remember,” said he, “that it was about nine in the

morning when I left Charlottesville. I bent my steps immediately

to the mountains, and, about ten, entered a gorge which was

entirely new to me. I followed the windings of this pass with

much interest. The scenery which presented itself on all sides,

although scarcely entitled to be called grand, had about it an

indescribable and to me a delicious aspect of dreary desolation.

The solitude seemed absolutely virgin. I could not help believing

that the green sods and the gray rocks upon which I trod had been

trodden never before by the foot of a human being. So entirely

secluded, and in fact inaccessible, except through a series of

accidents, is the entrance of the ravine, that it is by no means

impossible that I was indeed the first adventurer—the very first

and sole adventurer who had ever penetrated its recesses.

“The thick and peculiar mist, or smoke, which distinguishes the

Indian Summer, and which now hung heavily over all objects,

served, no doubt, to deepen the vague impressions which these

objects created. So dense was this pleasant fog that I could at

no time see more than a dozen yards of the path before me. This

path was excessively sinuous, and as the sun could not be seen, I

soon lost all idea of the direction in which I journeyed. In the

meantime the morphine had its customary effect—that of enduing

all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the

quivering of a leaf—in the hue of a blade of grass—in the shape

of a trefoil—in the humming of a bee—in the gleaming of a

dew-drop—in the breathing of the wind—in the faint odors that

came from the forest—there came a whole universe of suggestion—a

gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.

“Busied in this, I walked on for several hours, during which the

mist deepened around me to so great an extent that at length I

was reduced to an absolute groping of the way. And now an

indescribable uneasiness possessed me—a species of nervous

hesitation and tremor. I feared to tread, lest I should be

precipitated into some abyss. I remembered, too, strange stories

told about these Ragged Hills, and of the uncouth and fierce

races of men who tenanted their groves and caverns. A thousand

vague fancies oppressed and disconcerted me—fancies the more

distressing because vague. Very suddenly my attention was

arrested by the loud beating of a drum.

“My amazement was, of course, extreme. A drum in these hills was

a thing unknown. I could not have been more surprised at the

sound of the trump of the Archangel. But a new and still more

astounding source of interest and perplexity arose. There came a

wild rattling or jingling sound, as if of a bunch of large keys,

and upon the instant a dusky-visaged and half-naked man rushed

past me with a shriek. He came so close to my person that I felt

his hot breath upon my face. He bore in one hand an instrument

composed of an assemblage of steel rings, and shook them

vigorously as he ran. Scarcely had he disappeared in the mist

before, panting after him, with open mouth and glaring eyes,

there darted a huge beast. I could not be mistaken in its

character. It was a hyena.

“The sight of this monster rather relieved than heightened my

terrors—for I now made sure that I dreamed, and endeavored to

arouse myself to waking consciousness. I stepped boldly and

briskly forward. I rubbed my eyes. I called aloud. I pinched my

limbs. A small spring of water presented itself to my view, and

here, stooping, I bathed my hands and my head and neck. This

seemed to dissipate the equivocal sensations which had hitherto

annoyed me. I arose, as I thought, a new man, and proceeded

steadily and complacently on my unknown way.

“At length, quite overcome by exertion, and by a certain

oppressive closeness of the atmosphere, I seated myself beneath a

tree. Presently there came a feeble gleam of sunshine, and the

shadow of the leaves of the tree fell faintly but definitely upon

the grass. At this shadow I gazed wonderingly for many minutes.

Its character stupefied me with astonishment. I looked upward.

The tree was a palm.

“I now arose hurriedly, and in a state of fearful agitation—for

the fancy that I dreamed would serve me no longer. I saw—I felt

that I had perfect command of my senses—and these senses now

brought to my soul a world of novel and singular sensation. The

heat became all at once intolerable. A strange odor loaded the

breeze. A low, continuous murmur, like that arising from a full,

but gently flowing river, came to my ears, intermingled with the

peculiar hum of multitudinous human voices.

“While I listened in an extremity of astonishment which I need

not attempt to describe, a strong and brief gust of wind bore off

the incumbent fog as if by the wand of an enchanter.

“I found myself at the foot of a high mountain, and looking down

into a vast plain, through which wound a majestic river. On the

margin of this river stood an Eastern-looking city, such as we

read of in the Arabian Tales, but of a character even more

singular than any there described. From my position, which was

far above the level of the town, I could perceive its every nook

and corner, as if delineated on a map. The streets seemed

innumerable, and crossed each other irregularly in all

directions, but were rather long winding alleys than streets, and

absolutely swarmed with inhabitants. The houses were wildly

picturesque. On every hand was a wilderness of balconies, of

verandas, of minarets, of shrines, and fantastically carved

oriels. Bazaars abounded; and in these were displayed rich wares

in infinite variety and profusion—silks, muslins, the most

dazzling cutlery, the most magnificent jewels and gems. Besides

these things, were seen, on all sides, banners and palanquins,

litters with stately dames close-veiled, elephants gorgeously

caparisoned, idols grotesquely hewn, drums, banners, and gongs,

spears, silver and gilded maces. And amid the crowd, and the

clamor, and the general intricacy and confusion—amid the million

of black and yellow men, turbaned and robed, and of flowing

beard, there roamed a countless multitude of holy filleted bulls,

while vast legions of the filthy but sacred ape clambered,

chattering and shrieking, about the cornices of the mosques, or

clung to the minarets and oriels. From the swarming streets to

the banks of the river, there descended innumerable flights of

steps leading to bathing places, while the river itself seemed to

force a passage with difficulty through the vast fleets of

deeply-burthened ships that far and wide encountered its surface.

Beyond the limits of the city arose, in frequent majestic groups,

the palm and the cocoa, with other gigantic and weird trees of

vast age; and here and there might be seen a field of rice, the

thatched hut of a peasant, a tank, a stray temple, a gypsy camp,

or a solitary graceful maiden taking her way, with a pitcher upon

her head, to the banks of the magnificent river.

“You will say now, of course, that I dreamed; but not so. What I

saw—what I heard—what I felt—what I thought—had about it nothing

of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream. All was rigorously

self-consistent. At first, doubting that I was really awake, I

entered into a series of tests, which soon convinced me that I

really was. Now, when one dreams, and, in the dream, suspects

that he dreams, the suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and

the sleeper is almost immediately aroused. Thus Novalis errs not

in saying that ‘we are near waking when we dream that we dream.’

Had the vision occurred to me as I describe it, without my

suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it might absolutely have

been, but, occurring as it did, and suspected and tested as it

was, I am forced to class it among other phenomena.”

“In this I am not sure that you are wrong,” observed Dr.

Templeton, “but proceed. You arose and descended into the city.”

“I arose,” continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of

profound astonishment “I arose, as you say, and descended into

the city. On my way I fell in with an immense populace, crowding

through every avenue, all in the same direction, and exhibiting

in every action the wildest excitement. Very suddenly, and by

some inconceivable impulse, I became intensely imbued with

personal interest in what was going on. I seemed to feel that I

had an important part to play, without exactly understanding what

it was. Against the crowd which environed me, however, I

experienced a deep sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid

them, and, swiftly, by a circuitous path, reached and entered the

city. Here all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small

party of men, clad in garments half Indian, half European, and

officered by gentlemen in a uniform partly British, were engaged,

at great odds, with the swarming rabble of the alleys. I joined

the weaker party, arming myself with the weapons of a fallen

officer, and fighting I knew not whom with the nervous ferocity

of despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers, and driven to

seek refuge in a species of kiosk. Here we barricaded ourselves,

and, for the present were secure. From a loop-hole near the

summit of the kiosk, I perceived a vast crowd, in furious

agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung

the river. Presently, from an upper window of this place, there

descended an effeminate-looking person, by means of a string made

of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand, in which he

escaped to the opposite bank of the river.

“And now a new object took possession of my soul. I spoke a few

hurried but energetic words to my companions, and, having

succeeded in gaining over a few of them to my purpose made a

frantic sally from the kiosk. We rushed amid the crowd that

surrounded it. They retreated, at first, before us. They rallied,

fought madly, and retreated again. In the mean time we were borne

far from the kiosk, and became bewildered and entangled among the

narrow streets of tall, overhanging houses, into the recesses of

which the sun had never been able to shine. The rabble pressed

impetuously upon us, harrassing us with their spears, and

overwhelming us with flights of arrows. These latter were very

remarkable, and resembled in some respects the writhing creese of

the Malay. They were made to imitate the body of a creeping

serpent, and were long and black, with a poisoned barb. One of

them struck me upon the right temple. I reeled and fell. An

instantaneous and dreadful sickness seized me. I struggled—I

gasped—I died.”

“You will hardly persist _now_,” said I smiling, “that the whole

of your adventure was not a dream. You are not prepared to

maintain that you are dead?”

When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally

from Bedloe in reply, but, to my astonishment, he hesitated,

trembled, became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked

toward Templeton. He sat erect and rigid in his chair—his teeth

chattered, and his eyes were starting from their sockets.

“Proceed!” he at length said hoarsely to Bedloe.

“For many minutes,” continued the latter, “my sole sentiment—my

sole feeling—was that of darkness and nonentity, with the

consciousness of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent

and sudden shock through my soul, as if of electricity. With it

came the sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I felt—not

saw. In an instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no

bodily, no visible, audible, or palpable presence. The crowd had

departed. The tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative

repose. Beneath me lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple,

the whole head greatly swollen and disfigured. But all these

things I felt—not saw. I took interest in nothing. Even the

corpse seemed a matter in which I had no concern. Volition I had

none, but appeared to be impelled into motion, and flitted

buoyantly out of the city, retracing the circuitous path by which

I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the ravine in

the mountains at which I had encountered the hyena, I again

experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery; the sense of

weight, of volition, of substance, returned. I became my original

self, and bent my steps eagerly homeward—but the past had not

lost the vividness of the real—and not now, even for an instant,

can I compel my understanding to regard it as a dream.”

“Nor was it,” said Templeton, with an air of deep solemnity, “yet

it would be difficult to say how otherwise it should be termed.

Let us suppose only, that the soul of the man of to-day is upon

the verge of some stupendous psychal discoveries. Let us content

ourselves with this supposition. For the rest I have some

explanation to make. Here is a watercolor drawing, which I should

have shown you before, but which an unaccountable sentiment of

horror has hitherto prevented me from showing.”

We looked at the picture which he presented. I saw nothing in it

of an extraordinary character, but its effect upon Bedloe was

prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a

miniature portrait—a miraculously accurate one, to be sure—of his

own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I

regarded it.

“You will perceive,” said Templeton, “the date of this picture—it

is here, scarcely visible, in this corner—1780. In this year was

the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead friend—a Mr.

Oldeb—to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the

administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty years

old. When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the

miraculous similarity which existed between yourself and the

painting which induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship,

and to bring about those arrangements which resulted in my

becoming your constant companion. In accomplishing this point, I

was urged partly, and perhaps principally, by a regretful memory

of the deceased, but also, in part, by an uneasy, and not

altogether horrorless curiosity respecting yourself.

“In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid

the hills, you have described, with the minutest accuracy, the

Indian city of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the

combat, the massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection

of Cheyte Sing, which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put

in imminent peril of his life. The man escaping by the string of

turbans was Cheyte Sing himself. The party in the kiosk were

sepoys and British officers, headed by Hastings. Of this party I

was one, and did all I could to prevent the rash and fatal sally

of the officer who fell, in the crowded alleys, by the poisoned

arrow of a Bengalee. That officer was my dearest friend. It was

Oldeb. You will perceive by these manuscripts,” (here the speaker

produced a note-book in which several pages appeared to have been

freshly written,) “that at the very period in which you fancied

these things amid the hills, I was engaged in detailing them upon

paper here at home.”

In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs

appeared in a Charlottesville paper:

“We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr. Augustus

Bedlo, a gentleman whose amiable manners and many virtues have

long endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville.

“Mr. B., for some years past, has been subject to neuralgia,

which has often threatened to terminate fatally; but this can be

regarded only as the mediate cause of his decease. The proximate

cause was one of especial singularity. In an excursion to the

Ragged Mountains, a few days since, a slight cold and fever were

contracted, attended with great determination of blood to the

head. To relieve this, Dr. Templeton resorted to topical

bleeding. Leeches were applied to the temples. In a fearfully

brief period the patient died, when it appeared that in the jar

containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of

the venomous vermicular sangsues which are now and then found in

the neighboring ponds. This creature fastened itself upon a small

artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the

medicinal leech caused the mistake to be overlooked until too

late.

“N. B.—The poisonous sangsue of Charlottesville may always be

distinguished from the medicinal leech by its blackness, and

especially by its writhing or vermicular motions, which very

nearly resemble those of a snake.”

I was speaking with the editor of the paper in question, upon the

topic of this remarkable accident, when it occurred to me to ask

how it happened that the name of the deceased had been given as

Bedlo.

“I presume,” I said, “you have authority for this spelling, but I

have always supposed the name to be written with an e at the

end.”

“Authority?—no,” he replied. “It is a mere typographical error.

The name is Bedlo with an e, all the world over, and I never knew

it to be spelt otherwise in my life.”

“Then,” said I mutteringly, as I turned upon my heel, “then

indeed has it come to pass that one truth is stranger than any

fiction—for Bedloe, without the e, what is it but Oldeb

conversed! And this man tells me that it is a typographical

error.”

THE SPECTACLES

Many years ago, it was the fashion to ridicule the idea of “love

at first sight;” but those who think, not less than those who

feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern

discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or

magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the most natural, and,

consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections

are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy—in

a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the psychal

fetters are those which are riveted by a glance. The confession I

am about to make will add another to the already almost

innumerable instances of the truth of the position.

My story requires that I should be somewhat minute. I am still a

very young man—not yet twenty-two years of age. My name, at

present, is a very usual and rather plebeian one—Simpson. I say

“at present;” for it is only lately that I have been so

called—having legislatively adopted this surname within the last

year in order to receive a large inheritance left me by a distant

male relative, Adolphus Simpson, Esq. The bequest was conditioned

upon my taking the name of the testator,—the family, not the

Christian name; my Christian name is Napoleon Bonaparte—or, more

properly, these are my first and middle appellations.

I assumed the name, Simpson, with some reluctance, as in my true

patronym, Froissart, I felt a very pardonable pride—believing

that I could trace a descent from the immortal author of the

“Chronicles.” While on the subject of names, by the bye, I may

mention a singular coincidence of sound attending the names of

some of my immediate predecessors. My father was a Monsieur

Froissart, of Paris. His wife—my mother, whom he married at

fifteen—was a Mademoiselle Croissart, eldest daughter of

Croissart the banker, whose wife, again, being only sixteen when

married, was the eldest daughter of one Victor Voissart. Monsieur

Voissart, very singularly, had married a lady of similar name—a

Mademoiselle Moissart. She, too, was quite a child when married;

and her mother, also, Madame Moissart, was only fourteen when led

to the altar. These early marriages are usual in France. Here,

however, are Moissart, Voissart, Croissart, and Froissart, all in

the direct line of descent. My own name, though, as I say, became

Simpson, by act of Legislature, and with so much repugnance on my

part, that, at one period, I actually hesitated about accepting

the legacy with the useless and annoying proviso attached.

As to personal endowments, I am by no means deficient. On the

contrary, I believe that I am well made, and possess what nine

tenths of the world would call a handsome face. In height I am

five feet eleven. My hair is black and curling. My nose is

sufficiently good. My eyes are large and gray; and although, in

fact they are weak to a very inconvenient degree, still no defect

in this regard would be suspected from their appearance. The

weakness itself, however, has always much annoyed me, and I have

resorted to every remedy—short of wearing glasses. Being youthful

and good-looking, I naturally dislike these, and have resolutely

refused to employ them. I know nothing, indeed, which so

disfigures the countenance of a young person, or so impresses

every feature with an air of demureness, if not altogether of

sanctimoniousness and of age. An eyeglass, on the other hand, has

a savor of downright foppery and affectation. I have hitherto

managed as well as I could without either. But something too much

of these merely personal details, which, after all, are of little

importance. I will content myself with saying, in addition, that

my temperament is sanguine, rash, ardent, enthusiastic—and that

all my life I have been a devoted admirer of the women.

One night last winter I entered a box at the P—— Theatre, in

company with a friend, Mr. Talbot. It was an opera night, and the

bills presented a very rare attraction, so that the house was

excessively crowded. We were in time, however, to obtain the

front seats which had been reserved for us, and into which, with

some little difficulty, we elbowed our way.

For two hours my companion, who was a musical fanatico, gave his

undivided attention to the stage; and, in the meantime, I amused

myself by observing the audience, which consisted, in chief part,

of the very elite of the city. Having satisfied myself upon this

point, I was about turning my eyes to the prima donna, when they

were arrested and riveted by a figure in one of the private boxes

which had escaped my observation.

If I live a thousand years, I can never forget the intense

emotion with which I regarded this figure. It was that of a

female, the most exquisite I had ever beheld. The face was so far

turned toward the stage that, for some minutes, I could not

obtain a view of it—but the form was divine; no other word can

sufficiently express its magnificent proportion—and even the term

“divine” seems ridiculously feeble as I write it.