Best Short Stories - Edgar Allan Poe E-Book

Edgar Allan Poe

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 416

Beschreibung

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, writer, literary critic, and editor. Poe was an extraordinary storyteller and wrote memorable tales of mystery, terror, and detective stories, always with his unique and pioneering style. In "Best Short stories Edgar Allan Poe," readers can enjoy 23 exceptional stories by Poe, such as "The Man in the Crowd," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat," "The Purloined Letter," among other pearls of world literature.

Leseprobe

Edgar Allan Poe

EDGAR ALLAN POE´S

BEST SHORT STORIES

Contents

INTRODUCTION

The Power of Words

The Man of the Crowd

Morella

The Oval Portrait

The Cask of Amontillado

The Premature Burial

A Tale Of The Ragged Mountains

King Pest

Mesmeric Revelation

The Facts in The Case of M. Valdemar

A Descent into the Maelstrom

Ms Found In a Bottle

The Purkoined Letter

Sphinx

Shadow a parable

Silence, a Fable

The Landscape Garden

The Black Cat

The spectacles

Mystification

Landors Cottage

Morning on the Wissahiccon

INTRODUCTION

Edgar Allan Poe

1809-1849

A howl, a scream, half horror, half triumph, as if only it could have come from hell, from the throats of the damned, in their agony, and from the exultant demons with their condemnation.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was the son of a couple of poor actors, David Poe and Isabel Arnold, who traveled through American cities without much success. The father, it is not known whether he abandoned the mother or died shortly after Edgar's birth; it is only known that she died in complete abandonment when the son was about two years old. Charitably taken into the home of the wealthy Scottish merchant John Allan (whose family name Poe would add to his own name) and his wife, Frances Allan. The child received much love and attention, particularly from his adoptive mother, and attended good schools.

From an early age, young Edgar showed signs of remarkable intelligence and poetic talent, but also of an undisciplined and haughty temperament, which led to disagreements with Mr. John Allan, escalating into conflict when, in Virginia, where he was attending university, the young man began to live recklessly and incur debts. Thus, he was forced to abandon his studies and enlist in the Army. After serving for two years, he reconciled with Mr. John Allan and entered West Point Military Academy, from which he deliberately expelled himself, unable to bear the strict discipline.

From that moment on, definitively rejected by Mr. Allan — Mrs. Allan, who was so fond of "her boy," had died — Poe's life became difficult, without any stability. He contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines, some of which ensured prosperity, but he could not stay long in any of them; he became known and even famous, but still couldn't find a way to secure a decent life for himself and the two self-sacrificing individuals whose affection accompanied him through the most painful experiences: his cousin and wife Virginia Clemm, and her mother.

His bouts of illness, alcoholism, unrestrained controversies, and personal conflicts became increasingly frequent. In 1847, Virginia died of tuberculosis. In 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found intoxicated and unconscious on a street in Baltimore. He died shortly after, just ten days before the scheduled date for his second marriage, to a wealthy widow.

In addition to poems of strange beauty, including the famous "The Raven," a novel titled "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," and numerous articles of literary criticism and theory, Poe wrote many short stories and can be considered one of the creators of the modern short story. In these works, as asserted by Baudelaire:

"The entrance is always attractive without violence, like in a whirlwind. Its solemnity surprises and keeps the mind alert. One soon feels that it is something serious. And slowly, gradually, a story unfolds whose interest lies entirely in an imperceptible deviation of the intellect, in an audacious hypothesis, in an imprudent blending of nature in the amalgam of faculties. The reader, prey to vertigo, finds himself forced to follow the author in his engaging deductions. No one, I repeat, has recounted with greater magic the exceptions of human life and nature; the ardors of curiosity in convalescence; the end of season laden with enervating splendors, warm, humid, and misty, in which tears fill the eyes not from the heart; hallucination, initially leaving room for doubt, and soon after convincing the reasoner like a book; absurdity taking hold of intelligence and governing it with astonishing logic; hysteria usurping the place of will, contradiction established between nerves and spirit, and man dissonant to the point of expressing pain through laughter."

This wonderful definition by Baudelaire, which introduced Edgar Allan Poe to European readers, refers primarily to the fantastic and terrifying tales, such as "The Case of M. Valdemar," in which a corpse is prevented from dissolving for seven months by hypnotic influence; "The Black Cat," the case of a cat killed by a sadist, whom another cat denounces as the murderer of its own mistress; "The Fall of the House of Usher," the story of the neurotic brother who buries his sister alive; and, especially, "The Man of the Crowd," perhaps the most impressive of all, precisely because it has no true action and horror is entirely concentrated in the atmosphere.

Another group is formed by the so-called "tales of ratiocination," which gave rise to the modern detective story. Among them is the famous "The Gold-Bug," entirely based on the deciphering of a cryptogram, and the three cases of Dupin, the amateur detective, predecessor to Sherlock Holmes, Arsène Lupin, and many others: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt," and "The Purloined Letter," in which the solution to the problem is always achieved through the application of rigorous logic.

The Power of Words

OINOS. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!

AGATHOS. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

OINOS. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of all.

AGATHOS. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness but in the acquisition of knowledge! In forever knowing, we are forever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

OINOS. But does not The Most High know all?

AGATHOS. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to Him.

OINOS. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

AGATHOS. Look down into the abysmal distances! — attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus — and thus — and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe? — the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

OINOS. I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

AGATHOS. There are no dreams in Aidenn — but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is forever unquenchable within it — since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul's self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets and heart's  — ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple — tinted suns.

OINOS. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me! — speak to me in the earth's familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

AGATHOS. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

OINOS. Explain.

AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.

OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.

AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far — that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.

AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation — and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens — are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth and, in so doing, gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth's air, which thenceforward and forever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation — so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb and impress (forever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless — and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis — who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation — these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress — that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS. Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding — one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded — there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air — and the ether through the air —  to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe; — and the being of infinite understanding — the being whom we have imagined — might trace the remote undulations of the impulse — trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of an matter — upward and onward forever in their modifications of old forms — or, in other words, in their creation of new — until he found them reflected — unimpressive at last — back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a thing do this but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him — should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection — he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection — this faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causes — is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone — but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic intelligences.

OINOS. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

AGATHOS. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether —  which, since it pervades and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

OINOS. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought — and the source of all thought is —

OINOS. God.

AGATHOS. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished — of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS. You did.

AGATHOS. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

OINOS. But why, Agathos, do you weep — and why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star — which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream — but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS. They are! — they are! This wild star — it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved — I spoke it — with a few passionate sentences —  into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.

THE END

The Man of the Crowd

It was well said of a certain German book that “er lasst . sich nicht lesen” — it does not permit itself to be read. There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking them piteously in the eyes — die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the large bow window of the D — Coffee-House in London. For some months I had been ill in health but was now convalescent and, with returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so precisely the converse of ennui — moods of the keenest appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in everything With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the room and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city and had been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on, the throng moment increased; and, by the time the lamps were well lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past the door. At this particular period of the evening I had never before been in a similar situation and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me, therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. I gave up, at length, all care of things within the hotel and became absorbed in contemplation of the scene without.

At first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. I looked at the passengers in masses and thought of them in their aggregate relations. Soon, however, I descended to details and regarded with minute interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage and expression of countenance.

By far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied business-like demeanor and seemed to be thinking only of making their way through the press. Their brows were knit and their eyes rolled quickly; when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no symptom of impatience but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. Others, still a numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces and talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude on account of the very denseness of the company around. When impeded in their progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering but redoubled their gesticulations and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile upon the lips, the course of the persons impeding them. If jostled, they bowed profusely to the j ostlers and appeared overwhelmed with confusion. — There was nothing very distinctive about these two large classes beyond what I have noted. Their habiliments belonged to that order which is pointedly termed the decent. They were undoubtedly noblemen, merchants, attorneys, tradesmen, stock-jobbers — the Eupatrids and the common-places of society — men of leisure and men actively engaged in affairs of their own — conducting business upon their own responsibility. They did not greatly excite my attention.

The tribe of clerks was an obvious one and here I discerned two remarkable divisions. There were the junior clerks of flash houses — young gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair and supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. They wore the castoff graces of the gentry; — and this, I believe, involves the best definition of the class.

The division of the upper clerks of staunch firms, or of the “steady old fellows,” it was not possible to mistake. These were known by their coats and pantaloons of black or brown, made to sit comfortably, with white cravats and waistcoats, broad solid-looking shoes and thick hose or gaiters. — They had all slightly bald heads, from which the right ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability; — if indeed there be an affectation so honorable.

There were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily understood as belonging to the race of swell pickpockets, with which all great cities are infested. I watched these gentry with much inquisitiveness and found it difficult to imagine how they should ever be mistaken for gentlemen by gentlemen themselves. Their voluminousness of wristband, with an air of excessive frankness, should betray them at once.

The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily recognizable. They wore every variety of dress, from that of the desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief, gilt chains and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. Still all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a filmy dimness of eye and pallor and compression of lip! There were two other traits, moreover, by which I could always detect them; — a guarded lowness of tone in conversation and a more than ordinary extension of the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers. — Very often, in company with these sharpers, I observed an order of men somewhat different in habits but still birds of a kindred feather. They may be defined as the gentlemen who live by their wits. They seem to prey upon the public in two battalions — that of the dandies and that of the military men. Of the first grade the leading features are long locks and smiles; of the second frogged coats and frowns.

Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and deeper themes for speculation. I saw Jew peddlers, with hawk eyes flashing from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven forth into the night for charity; feeble and ghastly invalids, upon whom death had placed a sure hand and who sidled and tottered through the mob, looking every one beseechingly in the face, as if in search of some chance consolation, some lost hope; modest young girls returning from long and late labor to a cheerless home and shrinking more tearfully than indignantly from the glances of ruffians, whose direct contact, even, could not be avoided; women of the town of all kinds and of all ages — the unequivocal beauty in the prime of her womanhood, putting one in mind of the statue in Lucian, with the surface of Parian marble and the interior filled with filth the loathsome and utterly lost leper in rags — the wrinkled, bejeweled and paint-begrimed beldame, making a last effort at youth — the mere child of immature form, yet, from long association, an adept in the dreadfuls coquetries of her trade and burning with a rabid ambition to be ranked the. equal of her elders in vice; drunkards innumerable and indescribable —  some in shreds and patches, reeling, inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyes — some in whole although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual lips and hearty-looking rubicund faces — others clothed in materials which had once been good and which even now were scrupulously well brushed — men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy step but whose countenances were fearfully pale, whose eyes hideously wild and red and who clutched with quivering fingers, as they strode through the crowd, at every object which came within their reach; beside these, pie-men, porters,' coal-heavers, sweeps, organ-grinders, monkey-exhibiters and ballad mongers, those who vended with those who sang; ragged artisans and exhausted laborers of every description and all full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the ear and gave an aching sensation to the eye.

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy and threw over everything a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid — as that ebony to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.

The wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted before the window, prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, I could frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of long years.

With my brow to the glass, I was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob, when suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepid old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age,) — a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression. Anything even remotely resembling that expression I had never seen before. I well remember that my first thought, upon beholding it, was that Retzch, had he viewed it, would have gready preferred it to his own pictural incarnations of the fiend. As I endeavored, during the brief minute of my original survey, to form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense — of supreme despair. I felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. “How wild a history,” I said to myself, “is written within that bosom!” Then came a craving desire to keep the man in view — to know more of him. Hurriedly putting on an overcoat and seizing my hat and cane, I made my way into the street and pushed through the crowd in the direction which I had seen him take; for he had already disappeared. With some little difficulty I at length came within sight of him, approached and followed him closely, yet cautiously, so as not to attract his attention.

I had now a good opportunity of examining his person. He was short in stature, very thin and apparently very feeble. His clothes, generally, were filthy and ragged; but as he came, now and then, within the strong glare of a lamp, I perceived that his linen, although dirty, was of beautiful texture; and my vision deceived me, or, through a rent in a closely-but-toned and evidently second-handed roquelaire which enveloped him, I caught a glimpse both of a diamond and of a dagger. These observations heightened my curiosity and I resolved to follow the stranger whithersoever he should go.

It was now fully night-fall and a thick humid fog hung over the city, soon ending in a settled and heavy rain. This change of weather had an odd effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new commotion and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas. The waver, the jostle and the hum increased in a tenfold degree. For my own part I did not much regard the rain — the lurking of an old fever in my system rendering the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant. Tying a handkerchief about my mouth, I kept on. For half an hour the old man held his way with difficulty along the great thoroughfare; and I here walked close at his elbow through fear of losing sight of him. Never once turning his head to look back, he did not observe me. By and bye he passed into a cross street, which, although densely filled with people, was not quite so much thronged as the main one he had quitted. Here a change in his demeanor became evident. He walked more slowly and with less object than before — more hesitatingly. He crossed and re-crossed the way repeatedly without apparent aim; and the press was still so thick that, at every such movement, I was obliged to follow him closely. The street was a narrow and long one and his course lay within it for nearly an hour, during which the passengers had gradually diminished to about that number which is ordinarily seen at noon in Broadway near the Park — so vast a difference is there between a London populace and that of the most frequented American city. A second turn brought us into a square, brilliantly lighted and overflowing with life. The old manner of the stranger re-appeared. His chin fell upon his breast, while his eyes rolled wildly from under his knit brows, in every direction, upon those who hemmed him in. He urged his way steadily and perseveringly. I was surprised, however, to find, upon his having made the circuit of the square, that he turned and retraced his steps. Still more was I astonished to see him repeat the same walk several times — once nearly detecting me as he came round with a sudden movement.

In this exercise he spent another hour, at the end of which we met with far less interruption from passengers than at first. The rain fell fast; the air grew cool; and the people were retiring to their homes. With a gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a bye-street comparatively deserted. Down this, some quarter of a mile long, he rushed with an activity I could not have dreamed of seeing in one so aged and which put me to much trouble in pursuit. A few minutes brought us to a large and busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger appeared well acquainted and where his original demeanor again became apparent, as he forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the host of buyers and sellers.

During the hour and a half, or thereabouts, which we passed in this place, it required much caution on my part to keep him within reach without attracting his observation. Luckily I wore a pair of caoutchouc over-shoes and could move about in perfect silence. At no moment did he see that I watched him. He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke no word and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare. I was now utterly amazed at his behavior and firmly resolved that we should not part until I had satisfied myself in some measure respecting him A loud-toned clock struck eleven and the company were fast deserting the bazaar. A shop-keeper, in putting up a shutter, jostled the old man and at the instant I saw a strong shudder come over his frame. He hurried into the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant and then ran with incredible swiftness through many crooked and peopleless lanes, until we emerged once more upon the great thoroughfare whence we had started — the street of the D --- Hotel. It no longer wore, however, the same aspect. It was still brilliant with gas; but the rain fell fiercely and there were few persons to be seen. The stranger grew pale. He walked moodily some paces up the once populous avenue, then, with a heavy sigh, turned in the direction of the river and, plunging through a great variety of devious ways, came out, at length, in view of one of the principal theatres.. It was about being closed and the audience were thronging from the doors. I saw the old man gasp as if for breath while he threw himself amid the crowd; but I thought that the intense agony of his countenance had, in some measure, abated. His head again fell upon his breast; he appeared as I had seen him at first. I observed that he now took the course in which had gone the greater number of the audience — but, upon the whole, I was at a loss to comprehend the waywardness of his actions.

As he proceeded, the company grew more scattered and his old uneasiness and vacillation were resumed. For some time he followed closely a party of some ten or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one dropped off, until three only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy lane little frequented. The stranger paused and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very different from those we had hitherto traversed. It was the most noisome quarter of London, where everything wore the worst impress of the most deplorable poverty and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly growing grass. Horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters. The whole atmosphere teemed with desolation. Yet, as we proceeded, the sounds of human life revived by sure degrees and at length large bands of the most abandoned of a London populace were seen reeling to and fro. The spirits of the old man again flickered up, as a lamp which is near its death-hour. Once more he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze of light burst upon our sight and we stood before one of the huge suburban temples of Intemperance — one of the palaces of the fiend, Gin.

It was now nearly daybreak; but a number of wretched inebriates still pressed in and out of the flaunting entrance. With a half shriek of joy the old man forced a passage within, resumed at once his original bearing and stalked backward and forward, without apparent object, among the throng. He had not been thus long occupied, however, before a rush to the doors gave token that the host was closing them for the night. It was something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the countenance of the singular being whom I had watched so pertinaciously. Yet he did not hesitate in his career but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D------ Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro and during the day did not pass from out the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. “This old man,” I said at length, “is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the mm of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. The worst heart of the world is a grosser book than the ‘Hortulus Animae* and perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that cer lasst sich nicht lesen,} ”

* The "Hortulus Animae cum Oratiunculis Aliquibus Superadditis" of Grünninger.

THE END

Morella

MORELLA

Itself, by, solely, one everlasting and single.

PLATO: SYMPLOS.

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 favorite 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 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 channel where I laid the second. —  Morella.

THE END

The Oval Portrait

The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appenines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary — in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room — since it was already night — to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed — and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow and which purported to criticise and describe them.