University of Virginia Library

THE
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless
day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung
oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing
alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract
of country; and at length found myself, as the shades
of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy
House of Usher. I know not how it was—
but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of
insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable;
for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that
half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which
the mind usually receives even the sternest natural
images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon
the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the
simple landscape features of the domain—upon the
bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—
upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white
trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression
of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation
more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller
upon opium—the bitter lapse into common life—the

hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an
iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an
unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading
of the imagination could torture into aught of
the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—
what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation
of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all
insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was
forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion,
that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations
of very simple natural objects which have
the power of thus affecting us, still the reason, and
the analysis, of this power, lie among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that
a mere different arrangement of the particulars of
the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient
to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity
for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea,
I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black
and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the
dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder
even more thrilling than before—upon the re-modelled
and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the
ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like
windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed
to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor,
Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon
companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed
since our last meeting. A letter, however, had

lately reached me in a distant part of the country—
a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate
nature, had admitted of no other than a personal
reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation.
The writer spoke of acute bodily illness—of a
pitiable mental idiosyncrasy which oppressed him—
and of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and
indeed, his only personal friend, with a view of
attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some
alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in
which all this, and much more, was said—it was
the apparent heart that went with his request—
which allowed me no room for hesitation—and I
accordingly obeyed, what I still considered a very
singular summons, forthwith.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates,
yet I really knew little of my friend. His
reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I
was aware, however, that his very ancient family had
been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility
of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages,
in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of
late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive
charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the
intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox
and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science.
I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the
stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was,
had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch;
in other words, that the entire family lay in the
direct line of descent, and had always, with very

trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It
was this deficiency, I considered, while running over
in thought the perfect keeping of the character of
the premises with the accredited character of the
people, and while speculating upon the possible influence
which the one, in the long lapse of centuries,
might have exercised upon the other—it was this
deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent
undeviating transmission, from sire to son,
of the patrimony with the name, which had, at
length, so identified the two as to merge the original
title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation
of the “House of Usher”—an appellation which
seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
used it, both the family and the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat
childish experiment, of looking down within the tarn,
had been to deepen the first singular impression.
There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the
rapid increase of my superstition—for why should
I not so term it?—served mainly to accelerate the
increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the
paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a
basis. And it might have been for this reason only,
that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house
itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my
mind a strange fancy—a fancy so ridiculous, indeed,
that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the
sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked
upon my imagination as really to believe that around
about the whole mansion and domain there hung an

atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate
vicinity—an atmosphere which had no
affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked
up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and
the silent tarn, in the form of an inelastic vapor or
gas—dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leadenhued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have
been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real
aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed
to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration
of ages had been great. Minute fungi over-spread
the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled
web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart
from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of
the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a
wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation
of parts, and the utterly porous, and evidently
decayed condition of the individual stones. In this
there was much that reminded me of the specious
totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long
years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
from the breath of the external air. Beyond this
indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric
gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a
scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely
perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof
of the building in front, made its way down the wall
in a zig-zag direction, until it became lost in the
sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short cause-way
to the house. A servant in waiting took my

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

The room in which I found myself was very large
and excessively lofty. The windows were long,
narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from
the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible
from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light
made their way through the trelliced panes, and
served to render sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled
in vain to reach the remoter angles of the
chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted

ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The
general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique,
and tattered. Many books and musical instruments
lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to
the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of
sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable
gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa upon
which he had been lying at full length, and greeted
me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it,
I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the
constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world.
A glance, however, at his countenance convinced
me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for
some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon
him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely,
man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief
a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty
that I could bring myself to admit the identity
of the wan being before me with the companion of
my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had
been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of
complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond
comparison; lips somewhat thin and very
pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose
of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of
nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded
chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want
of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness
and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up

altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten.
And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing
character of these features, and of the expression
they were wont to convey, lay so much of change
that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly
pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of
the eye, above all things startled and even awed me.
The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all
unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it
floated rather than fell about the face, I could not,
even with effort, connect its arabesque expression
with any idea of simply humanity.

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

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

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

To an anomalous species of terror I found him
a bounden slave. “I shall perish,” said he, “I
must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and
not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events
of the future, not in themselves, but in their results.
I shudder at the thought of any, even the most
trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable
agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence
of danger, except in its absolute effect—
in terror. In this unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I
feel that I must inevitably abandon life and
reason together in my struggles with some fatal
demon of fear.”

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

He admitted, however, although with hesitation,
that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted
him could be traced to a more natural and far more
palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued
illness—indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution—of
a tenderly beloved sister; his sole companion
for long years—his last and only relative on
earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness
which I can never forget, “would leave him (him
the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race
of the Ushers.” As he spoke the lady Madeline (for
so was she called) passed slowly through a remote
portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed
my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread. Her
figure, her air, her features—all, in their very

minutest development were those—were identically,
(I can use no other sufficient term,) were identically
those of the Roderick Usher who sat beside me. A
feeling of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed
her retreating steps. As a door, at length, closed
upon her exit, my glance sought instinctively and
eagerly the countenance of the brother—but he had
buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive
that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread
the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled
the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a
gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent
although transient affections of a partially cataleptical
character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto
she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her
malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed;
but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at
the house, she succumbed, as her brother told me at
night with inexpressible agitation, to the prostrating
power of the destroyer—and I learned that the
glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain—that the
lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no
more.

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned
by either Usher or myself; and during this period,
I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the
melancholy of my friend. We painted and read
together—or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild

improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as
a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more
unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more
bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at
cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent
positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of
the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many
solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of
the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt
to convey an idea of the exact character of the
studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved
me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered
ideality threw a sulphurous lustre over all.
His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my
ears. Among other things, I bear painfully in mind
a certain singular perversion and amplification of the
wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the
paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded,
and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses
at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I
shuddered knowing not why, from these paintings
(vivid as their images now are before me) I would
in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion
which should lie within the compass of merely written
words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of
his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If
ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick
Usher. For me at least—in the circumstances
then surrounding me—there arose out of the pure

abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to
throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable
awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation
of the certainly glowing yet too concrete
reveries of Fuseli.

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

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the
auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable
to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects
of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow
limits to which he thus confined himself upon the
guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the
fantastic character of his performances. But the
fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted
for. They must have been, and were, in the
notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias,
(for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with
rhymed verbal improvisations,) the result of that

intense mental collectedness and concentration to
which I have previously alluded as observable only
in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement.
The words of one of these rhapsodies I have
easily borne away in memory. I was, perhaps, the
more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because,
in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I
fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full
consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering
of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses,
which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very
nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I well remember that suggestions arising from
this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there
became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention
not so much on account of its novelty, (for other
men have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity
with which he maintained it. This opinion,
in its general form, was that of the sentience of all
vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the
idea had assumed a more daring character, and
trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom
of inorganization. I lack words to express the
full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion.
The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously
hinted) with the gray stones of the home of
his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had
been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation
of these stones—in the order of their arrangement,
as well as in that of the many fungi
which overspread them, and of the decayed trees
which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed
endurance of this arrangement, and in its
reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence—the
evidence of the sentience—was to be
seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in
the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere
of their own about the waters and the walls.
The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent,

yet importunate and terrible influence which for
centuries had moulded the destinies of his family,
and which made him what I now saw him—what
he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I
will make none.

Our books—the books which, for years, had
formed no small portion of the mental existence of
the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict
keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored
together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse
of Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the
Selenography of Brewster; the Heaven and Hell of
Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas
Klimm de Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud,
of Jean d'Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the
Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and the
City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume
was a small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium,
by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne;
and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about
the old African Satyrs and Ægipans, over which
Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief
delight, however, was found in the earnest and repeated
perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious
book in quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten
church—the Vigilae Mortuorum secundum Chorum
Ecclesiae Maguntinae.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this
work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac,
when, one evening, having informed me
abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he

stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a
fortnight, (previously to its final interment,) in one of
the numerous vaults within the main walls of the
building. The wordly reason, however, assigned
for this singular proceeding, was one which I did
not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been
led to his resolution (so he told me) by considerations
of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,
of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on
the part of her medical men, and of the remote and
exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family.
I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister
countenance of the person whom I met upon the
staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I
had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best
but a harmless, and not by any means an unnatural,
precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in
the arrangements for the temporary entombment.
The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore
it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and
which had been so long unopened that our torches,
half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us
little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp,
and entirely without means of admission for light;
lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion
of the building in which was my own sleeping
apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote
feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep,
and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder,
or other highly combustible substance, as a portion

of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway
through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed
with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been,
also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused
an unusually sharp grating sound, as it moved upon
its hinges.

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

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed,
an observable change came over the features of the
mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner
had vanished. His ordinary occupations were

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

It was, most especially, upon retiring to bed late
in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the
placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that
I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep
came not near my couch—while the hours waned
and waned away. I struggled to reason off the
nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured
to believe that much, if not all of what I
felt, was due to the phantasmagoric influence of the
gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and
tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by

the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and
fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the
decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless.
An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded
my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very
heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking
this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted
myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within
the intense darkness of the chamber, harkened—
I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit
prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds
which came, through the pauses of the storm, at
long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered
by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet
unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste, for
I felt that I should sleep no more during the night,
and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable
condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly
to and fro through the apartment.

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

“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly,

after having stared about him for some moments in
silence—“you have not then seen it?—but, stay!
you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully
shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the gigantic
casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

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

“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said
I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle
violence, from the window to a seat. “These appearances,
which bewilder you, are merely electrical
phenomena not uncommon—or it may be that they
have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the

tarn. Let us close this casement—the air is chilling
and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of
your favorite romances. I will read, and you shall
listen—and so we will pass away this terrible night
together.

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

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

“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty
heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account
of the powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken,
waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who,

in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but,
feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the
rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and,
with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the
door for his gauntleted hand, and now pulling therewith
sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all
asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding
wood alarummed and reverberated throughout
the forest.”

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

“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering
within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to
perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in
the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious
demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard
before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and

upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass
with this legend enwritten—
And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the
head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave
up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and
harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain
to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful
noise of it, the like whereof was never before
heard.”

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

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence
of this second and most extraordinary coincidence,
by a thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder
and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any
observation, the sensitive nervousness of my companion.
I was by no means certain that he had
noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly,
a strange alteration had, during the last few minutes,

taken place in his demeanor. From a position
fronting my own, he had gradually brought round
his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the
chamber, and thus I could but partially perceive his
features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if
he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped
upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep,
from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I
caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his
body, too, was at variance with this idea—for he
rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant
and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of
all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot,
which thus proceeded:—

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

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than
—as if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment,
fallen heavily upon a floor of silver—I became aware
of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet
apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved,
I started convulsively to my feet; but the
measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed.

I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His
eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout
his whole countenance there reigned a more than
stony rigidity. But, as I laid my hand upon his
shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his frame;
a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that
he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,
as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely
over his person, I at length drank in the hideous
import of his words.

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it.
Long—long—long—many minutes, many hours,
many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—oh,
pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not
—I dared not speak! We have put her living in
the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute?
I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements
in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many
days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak!
And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the
breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of
the dragon, and the clangor of the shield—say,
rather, the rending of the coffin, and the grating of
the iron hinges, and her struggles within the coppered
archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly?
Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to
upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her
footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that
heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”
—here he sprung violently to his feet, and shrieked
out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up

his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now
stands without the door!”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance
there had been found the potency of a spell—the
huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed,
threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous
and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing
gust—but then without those doors there did stand
the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline
of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes,
and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every
portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she
remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the
threshold—then, with a low moaning cry, fell
heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and
in her horrible and now final death-agonies, bore him
to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he
had dreaded.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled
aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath
as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly
there shot along the path a wild light, and I
turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have
issued—for the vast house and its shadows were
alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,
setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly
through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which
I have before spoken, as extending from the roof of
the building, in a zigzag direction to the base. While
I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened—there came a
fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire orb of the

satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain
reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—
there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the
voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank
tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the
fragments of the “House of Usher.”