The Fall of the House of Usher - Noyemi
By Edgar Allan Poe
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be
observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to
afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived
to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a
constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired
to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added,
which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a
host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms,
and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of
certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his
eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but
peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did
not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden
slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this
deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be
lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but
in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most
trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable
agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved--in
this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or
later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in
some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental
condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions
in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many
years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here
to be re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the
mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by
dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit--an
effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and
of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,
brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of
the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a
more natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and
long-continued illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dis-
solution--of a tenderly beloved sister--his sole companion for
long years--his last and only relative on earth. "Her decease,"
he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, "would leave
him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race
of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was
she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the
apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared.
I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with
dread--and yet I found it impossible to account for such
feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes
followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed
upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the
countenance of the brother--but he had buried his face in his
hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which
trickled many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill
of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of
the person, and frequent although transient affections of a
partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis.
Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her
malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the
closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she
succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible
agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I
learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus
probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least
while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either
Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest
endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We
painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to
the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a
closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly
into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive
the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which
darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon
all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing
radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours
I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I
should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact
character of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he
involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly
distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His
long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among