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🟡 Six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allan Poe (Full Audiobook) | Edgar Allan Poe · Weird Fiction Audiobooks: Cosmic Horror, Strange Realities & Uncanny Tales

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  Speaker 1: Story one of six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information nor to volunteer, please
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Phil Schinevert The tell
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  Speaker 1: Tale Heart. True nervous, very very dreadfully nervous. I had
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  Speaker 1: been and am. But why will you say that I
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  Speaker 1: am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed,
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  Speaker 1: not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
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  Speaker 1: I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.
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  Speaker 1: I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad?
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  Speaker 1: Hearken and observe? How healthily, how calmly? I can tell
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  Speaker 1: you the whole story. It is impossible to say how
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  Speaker 1: first the idea entered my brain. But once conceived, it
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  Speaker 1: haunted me day and night. Object there was none passion,
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  Speaker 1: there was none. I loved the old man. He had
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  Speaker 1: never wronged me, he had never given me insult for
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  Speaker 1: his gold. I had no desire. I think it was
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  Speaker 1: his eye, Yes, it was this. He had the eye
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  Speaker 1: of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film
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  Speaker 1: over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold,
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  Speaker 1: and so by degrees, very gradually I made up my
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  Speaker 1: mind to take the life of the old man, and
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  Speaker 1: thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now this is
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  Speaker 1: the point you fancy me, mad, mad Oh nothing, but
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  Speaker 1: you should have seen me. You should have seen how
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  Speaker 1: wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with what foresight, with
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  Speaker 1: what dissimulation I went to work. I was never kinder
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  Speaker 1: to the old man than during the whole week before
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  Speaker 1: I killed him. And every night, about midnight I turned
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  Speaker 1: the latch of his door and opened it oh so gently.
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  Speaker 1: And then when I had made an opening sufficient for
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  Speaker 1: my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed
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  Speaker 1: closed that no light shone O. And then I thrust
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  Speaker 1: in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see
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  Speaker 1: how cunningly I thrust it in. I moved it slowly,
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  Speaker 1: very very slowly, so that I might not disturb the
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  Speaker 1: old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place
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  Speaker 1: my whole head within the opening, so far that I
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  Speaker 1: could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ah
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  Speaker 1: would a madman have been so wise as this? And
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  Speaker 1: then when my head was well in the room, I
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  Speaker 1: undid the lantern cautiously, oh so cautiously cautiously, for the
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  Speaker 1: hinges creaked. I undid it just so much that a
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  Speaker 1: single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And I
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  Speaker 1: did this for seven long nights, every night, just at midnight.
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  Speaker 1: But I found the eye always closed, and so it
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  Speaker 1: was impossible to do the work. For it was not
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  Speaker 1: the old man who vexed me, but tis evil eye.
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  Speaker 1: And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly
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  Speaker 1: into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him
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  Speaker 1: by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he
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  Speaker 1: had passed the night. So you see, he would have
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  Speaker 1: been a very profound old man, indeed to suspect that
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  Speaker 1: every night, just atoll I looked in upon him while
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  Speaker 1: he slept. Upon the eighth night, I was more than
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  Speaker 1: usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand
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  Speaker 1: moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night
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  Speaker 1: had I felt the extent of my own powers, of
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  Speaker 1: my sagacity. And I could hardly contain my feelings of
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  Speaker 1: triumph to think that fair I was opening the door
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  Speaker 1: a little by little, and he not even to dream
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  Speaker 1: of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at
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  Speaker 1: the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved
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  Speaker 1: on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may
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  Speaker 1: think that I drew back, but no. His room was
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  Speaker 1: as black as pitch, with a thick darkness, for the
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  Speaker 1: shutters were close, fastened through fear of robbers, and so
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  Speaker 1: I knew that he could not see the opening of
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  Speaker 1: the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
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  Speaker 1: I had my head in and was about to open
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  Speaker 1: the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tent fastening,
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  Speaker 1: and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out,
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  Speaker 1: Who's there. I kept quite still and said nothing. For
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  Speaker 1: a whole hour, I did not move a muscle, and
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  Speaker 1: in the meantime I did not hear him lie down.
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  Speaker 1: He was still sitting up in the bed, listening, just
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  Speaker 1: as I have done night after night, hearkening to the
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  Speaker 1: death watches in the wall. Presently I heard a slight groan,
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  Speaker 1: and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror.
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  Speaker 1: It was not the groan of pain or of grief.
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  Speaker 1: Oh no, it was the low, stifled sound that rises
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  Speaker 1: from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.
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  Speaker 1: I knew the sound well many a night, just at midnight,
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  Speaker 1: when all the world slept, it has welled up from
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  Speaker 1: my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo the terrors
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  Speaker 1: that distracted me. I say, I knew it well. I
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  Speaker 1: knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although
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  Speaker 1: I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been
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  Speaker 1: lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he
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  Speaker 1: had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever
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  Speaker 1: since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy
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  Speaker 1: them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself,
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  Speaker 1: it is nothing but the wind in the chimney. It
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  Speaker 1: is only a mouse crossing the floor, or it is
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  Speaker 1: barely a cricket which has made a slight chirp. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions,
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  Speaker 1: but he had found all in vain, all in vain,
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  Speaker 1: because death, in approaching him, has stalked with his black
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  Speaker 1: shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was
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  Speaker 1: the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him
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  Speaker 1: to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel,
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  Speaker 1: to feel the presence of my head within the room,
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  Speaker 1: when I had waited a long time, very repatiently, without
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  Speaker 1: hearing him lie down. I resolved to open a little,
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  Speaker 1: a very very little crevice in the lantern. So I
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  Speaker 1: opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily, until at
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  Speaker 1: last a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider,
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  Speaker 1: shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the
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  Speaker 1: vulture eye. It was open, wide, wide open, and I
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  Speaker 1: grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it
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  Speaker 1: with perfect distinctness, all a dull blue, with a hideous
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  Speaker 1: veil over it that chilled the very marrow of my bones.
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  Speaker 1: But I could see nothing else of the old man's
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  Speaker 1: face or person, for I had directed the ray, as
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  Speaker 1: if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot. And have
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  Speaker 1: I not told you that what you mistake for madness
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  Speaker 1: is but over acuteness of the sense. Now I say,
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  Speaker 1: there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound,
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  Speaker 1: such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I
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  Speaker 1: knew that sound well too. It was the beating of
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  Speaker 1: the old man's heart. It increased my fury as the
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  Speaker 1: beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. But
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  Speaker 1: even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed.
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  Speaker 1: I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I
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  Speaker 1: could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime, the hellish
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  Speaker 1: tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker,
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  Speaker 1: and louder and louder every instant, and the old man's
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  Speaker 1: terror must have been extreme. It grew louder, I say,
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  Speaker 1: louder every moment. Do you mark me well? I have
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  Speaker 1: told you that I am nervous, So I am, And now,
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  Speaker 1: at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful
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  Speaker 1: silence of that old house, so strange a noise as
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  Speaker 1: this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet for some minutes
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  Speaker 1: longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew
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  Speaker 1: louder louder. I thought the heart must burst. And now
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  Speaker 1: a new anxiety seized me. The sound would be heard
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  Speaker 1: by a neighbor. The old man's hour had come. With
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  Speaker 1: a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped
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  Speaker 1: into the room. He shrieked once, only once. In an instant.
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  Speaker 1: I dragged him to the floor and pulled the heavy
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  Speaker 1: bed over him. I then smiled gaily to find the
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  Speaker 1: deed so far done. But for many minutes the heart
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  Speaker 1: beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not
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  Speaker 1: vex me. It could not be heard through the wall.
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  Speaker 1: At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I
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  Speaker 1: removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone,
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  Speaker 1: stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and
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  Speaker 1: held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He
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  Speaker 1: was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
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  Speaker 1: If you still think me mad, you will think so
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  Speaker 1: no longer. When I described the wise precautions I took
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  Speaker 1: for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and
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  Speaker 1: I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all, I
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  Speaker 1: dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head, and the
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  Speaker 1: arms and the legs. I then took up three planks
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  Speaker 1: from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between
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  Speaker 1: the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly,
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  Speaker 1: that no human eye, not even his, could have detected
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  Speaker 1: anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out, no stain
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  Speaker 1: of any kind, no blood spot whatever. I had been
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  Speaker 1: too wary for that. A tub had caught all ha ha.
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  Speaker 1: When I had made an end of these labors, it
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  Speaker 1: was four o'clock, still dark as midnight. As the bell
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  Speaker 1: sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door.
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  Speaker 1: I went down to open it with a light heart,
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  Speaker 1: for what had I now to fear? There entered three men,
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  Speaker 1: who introduced themselves with perfect suavity, as officers of the police.
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  Speaker 1: A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night,
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  Speaker 1: suspicion of foul play had been aroused, information had been
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  Speaker 1: lodged at the police office, and they the officers, had
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  Speaker 1: been deputed to search the premises. I smiled, for what
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  Speaker 1: had I to fear? I bade the gentleman welcome. The shriek,
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  Speaker 1: I said, was my own in a dream. The old
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  Speaker 1: man I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took
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  Speaker 1: my visitors all over the house. I bade them search,
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  Speaker 1: search well. I led them at length to his chamber.
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  Speaker 1: I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm
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  Speaker 1: of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and
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  Speaker 1: desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself,
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  Speaker 1: in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my
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  Speaker 1: own seat, upon the very spot beneath which reposed the
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  Speaker 1: corpse of the victim. The officers were satisfied my manner
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  Speaker 1: had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat
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  Speaker 1: while I answered cheerily. They chatted of familiar things, but
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  Speaker 1: ere long I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone.
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  Speaker 1: My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears,
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  Speaker 1: But still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became
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  Speaker 1: more distinct. It continued and became more distinct. I talked
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  Speaker 1: more freely to get rid of the feeling, but it
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  Speaker 1: continued and gained deafenineness, until at length I found that
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  Speaker 1: the noise was not within my ears, no doubt. I
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  Speaker 1: now grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and
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  Speaker 1: with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased, and what
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  Speaker 1: could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound,
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  Speaker 1: much such a sound as a watchmate's when enveloped in cotton.
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  Speaker 1: I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not.
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  Speaker 1: I talked more quickly, more vehlent, but the noise steadily increased.
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  Speaker 1: I arose and argued about trifles, and a high key
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  Speaker 1: and with violent gesticulations. But the noise steadily increased. Why
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  Speaker 1: would they not be gone? I paced the floor to
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  Speaker 1: and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury
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  Speaker 1: by the observations of the men. But the noise steadily increased.
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  Speaker 1: Oh God, what could I do? I foamed, I raved,
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  Speaker 1: I swore. I swung the chair upon which I had
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  Speaker 1: been sitting and grated it upon the boards. But the
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  Speaker 1: noise arose overall and continually increased. It grew louder louder louder,
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  Speaker 1: And still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it
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  Speaker 1: possible they heard not? Oh Mighty God, no, no, they heard.
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  Speaker 1: They suspected, they knew that they were making a mockery
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  Speaker 1: of my horror. This I thought, and this I think.
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  Speaker 1: But anything was better than this agony, Anything was more
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  Speaker 1: tolerable than this derision. I could bear those hypocritical smiles.
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  Speaker 1: No longer. I felt that I must scream or die.
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  Speaker 1: And now again, hark louder, louder, louder, louder, villains, I shrieked,
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  Speaker 1: dissemble no more, I admit the deed tear up the planks.
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  Speaker 1: Here here it is the beating of his Hideous Heart
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  Speaker 1: end of the Tell Tale Heart Story, number two of
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  Speaker 1: six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. This LibriVox recording
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  Speaker 1: is in the public domain. The Masks of the Red Death.
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  Speaker 1: The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence
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  Speaker 1: had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was
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  Speaker 1: its avatar and its seal, the redness and the horror
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  Speaker 1: of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and
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  Speaker 1: then profuse bleeding at the pores with dissolution. These scarlet
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  Speaker 1: stains upon the body, and especially upon the face of
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  Speaker 1: the victim were the pest man, which shut him out
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  Speaker 1: from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow men.
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  Speaker 1: And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease
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  Speaker 1: were the incidents of half an hour. But the Prince
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  Speaker 1: Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions
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  Speaker 1: were half depopulated, he summoned to his cousin s a
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  Speaker 1: thousand hail and lighthearted friends from among the knights and
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  Speaker 1: dames of his court, and with these retired to the
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  Speaker 1: deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was
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  Speaker 1: an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's
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  Speaker 1: own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall
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  Speaker 1: girdled it. In. The wall had gates of iron. The courtiers,
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  Speaker 1: having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers, and welded the bolts.
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  Speaker 1: They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress
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  Speaker 1: to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within.
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  Speaker 1: The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions, the courtiers
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  Speaker 1: might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take
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  Speaker 1: care of itself. In the meantime. It was folly to
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  Speaker 1: grieve or to think the Prince had provided all the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there
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  Speaker 1: were ballet dancers, there were musicians, There was beauty, there
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  Speaker 1: was wine. All these and security were within. Without was
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  Speaker 1: the red death. It was toward the close of the
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  Speaker 1: fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the
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  Speaker 1: pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained
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  Speaker 1: his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most
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  Speaker 1: unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene that masquerade. But
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  Speaker 1: first let me tell of the rooms in which it
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  Speaker 1: was held. There were seven and imperial suite. In many palaces, however,
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  Speaker 1: such suites form a long and straight vista, while the
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  Speaker 1: folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand,
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  Speaker 1: so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded.
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  Speaker 1: Here the case was very different, as might have been
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  Speaker 1: expected from the Duke's love of the bazaar. The apartments
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  Speaker 1: were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little
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  Speaker 1: more than one at a time. There was a sharp
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  Speaker 1: turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each
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  Speaker 1: turn a novel effect to the right and left. In
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  Speaker 1: the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic
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  Speaker 1: window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the
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  Speaker 1: windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass,
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  Speaker 1: whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of
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  Speaker 1: the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That
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  Speaker 1: of the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue,
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  Speaker 1: and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was
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  Speaker 1: purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes
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  Speaker 1: were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were
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  Speaker 1: the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange,
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  Speaker 1: the fifth with white, the sixth with violet. The seventh
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  Speaker 1: apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung
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  Speaker 1: all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in
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  Speaker 1: heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.
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  Speaker 1: But in this chamber only the color of the windows
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  Speaker 1: failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet,
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  Speaker 1: a deep blood color. Now, in no one of the
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  Speaker 1: seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum. Amid the
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  Speaker 1: profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro
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  Speaker 1: or depended from the roof. There was no light of
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  Speaker 1: any kind emanating from lath, damp or candle within the
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  Speaker 1: suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite,
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  Speaker 1: there stood opposed to each window a heavy tripod bearing
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  Speaker 1: a brazier of fire that projected its rays through the
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  Speaker 1: tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room, and thus
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  Speaker 1: were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But
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  Speaker 1: in the western or black chamber, the effect of a
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  Speaker 1: firelight that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood
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  Speaker 1: tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so
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  Speaker 1: wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered,
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  Speaker 1: that there were few of the company bowlden up to
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  Speaker 1: set foot within its precincts at all. It was in
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  Speaker 1: this apartment, also that there stood against the western wall
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  Speaker 1: a gigantic clock of ebony, Its pendulum sa swung to
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  Speaker 1: and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang. And when
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  Speaker 1: the minute hand made the circuit of the face and
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  Speaker 1: the hour was to be stricken, there came from the
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  Speaker 1: brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear
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  Speaker 1: and loud and deep, and exceedingly musical, but of so
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  Speaker 1: peculiar a note an emphasis, that at each lapse of
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  Speaker 1: an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were constrained to
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  Speaker 1: pause momentarily in their performance to hearken to the sound.
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  Speaker 1: And thus the waltzers perforce seized their evolutions, and there
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: while the chimes of the clock yet rang. It was
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  Speaker 1: observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged
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  Speaker 1: and sedate passed their hands over their brows, as if
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  Speaker 1: in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had
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  Speaker 1: fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly.
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  Speaker 1: The musicians looked at each other and smiled, as if
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  Speaker 1: at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows
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  Speaker 1: each to the other that the next chiming of the
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: clock should produce in them no similar emotion. And then,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: after the lapse of sixty minutes, which embraced three thousand
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and six hundred seconds of the time that flies, there
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: came yet another chiming of the clock. And then were
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. But
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: in spite of these things it was a gay and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: magnificent revel. The tastes of the Duke were peculiar. He
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: had a fine eye for colors and effects. He disregarded
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. There are some
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: he was not it was necessary to hear, and see
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and touch him to be sure that he was not.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: He had directed in great part the movable embellishments of
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the Seven Chambers upon occasion of this great fete, and
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: it was his own guiding taste which had given character
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque. There were
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: much glare and glitter, and piquancy and phantasm, much of
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: what has been seen since in her Nanni. There were
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: such as the mad Man fashions. There was much of
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bazaarre,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: something of the terrible, and not a little of that
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: which might have excited disgust to and fro In the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Seven Chambers they are stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And these the dreams, writhe in and about, taking hue
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps and anon.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: There came the ebony clock which stands in the hall
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: of the Velvet. And then for a moment all is still,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: and all is silent, save the voice of the clock.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: The dreams are stiff frozen as they stand, but the
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: echoes of the chime die away they have endured, but
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: an instant and a light, half subdued laughter, floats after
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: them as they depart. And now again the music swells,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: and the dreams live and writhe to and fro more
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the chamber, which lies most westwardly of the seven, there
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: are now none of the maskers who venture, for the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: night is waning away, and there flows a ruddier light
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: through the blood colored panes, and the blackness of the
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: sable drapery appalls. And to him whose foot falls upon
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Ebony a muffled peal, more solemnly emphatic than any which
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: reaches their ears, who indulge in the more remote gaieties
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: of the other apartments. But these other apartments were densely crowded,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and in them beat feverishly the heart of life, and
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commence
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: the sounding of midnight upon the clock, And then the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: music ceased, as I have told, and the evolutions of
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the waltzers were quieted, and there was an uneasy cessation
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of all things as before. But now there were twelve
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: And thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: among those who reveled. And thus too it happened, perhaps
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: that before the last echoes of the last chime had
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: of no single individual before. And the rumor of this
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: length from the whole company a buzz, a murmur expressive
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: of disappropriation and surprise, then finally of terror, of horror,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and of disgust. In an assembly of phantasms such as
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I have painted, it may well be supposed that no
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth, the
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited. But the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: figur in question had out heroded herod, and gone beyond
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: the bounds of even the princes indefinite decorum. There are
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: chords in the heart of the most reckless which cannot
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of which no jest can be made. The whole company
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: indeed seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and bearing of the stranger, neither wit nor propriety exists.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: all this might have been endured, if not approved by
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: far as to assume the type of the red death.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: His vesture was dabbed in blood, and his broad brow,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the scarlet horror, with the eyes of Prince Prospero fell
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: upon this spectral image, which, with a slow and solemn movement,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: and fro am among the waltzers. He was seen to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: be convulsed in the first moment with a strong shudder,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: either of terror or distaste. But in the next his
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: brow reddened with rage. Who dares, he demanded hoarsely of
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the courtiers who stood near him, who dares insult us
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him, that
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: from the battlements. It was in the Eastern or Blue chamber,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: in which stood the Prince Prospero. As he uttered these words,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: they rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly, for
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: the Prince was a bold and robust man, and the
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: It was in the Blue room where stood the Prince
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: this group in the direction of the intruder, who, with
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the moment, was also near at hand, and now, with
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the liberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: assumptions of the Mummer had inspired the whole party, there
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: were found none who put forth hand to seize him,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: So that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Prince's person, And while the vast assembly, as if with
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: one impulse, shrank from the center of the rooms to
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the walls. He made his way uninterrupted, but with the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the first, through the blue chamber to the Purple, through
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the Purple to the Green, through the Green to the Orange,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: through this again to the white, and even thence to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the violet ere a decided movement had been made to
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none followed him
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: them all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: approached in rapid impetuosity to within three or four feet
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: of the retreating figure. When the latter, having attained the
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: There was a sharp cry, and the dagger dropped, gleaming
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: upon the sable carpet, upon which instantly afterwards fell prostrate
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: in death. The Prince Prospero, then, summoning the wild courage
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of despair, a throng of the revelers at once threw
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: grave sermons and corpselike mask, which they handled with so
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: violent a rudeness untenanted by any tangible form, and now
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: was acknowledged the presence of the red death. He had
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: come like a thief in the night, and one by
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: one dropped the revelers in the blood bedewed halls of
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: their revel and died, each in the despairing posture of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: his fall, And the life of the ebony clock went
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: out with that of the last of the gay, and
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the flames of the tripods expired and darkness and decay,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all, And
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: of the Mask of the Red Death story number three
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: of six Creepy stories by Poe. This LibriVox recording is
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. The Black Cat For the most
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: wild yet most homely narrative which I am about to pin,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: I neither expect nor solicit belief, mad Indeed would I
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: be to expect it in a case where my very
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad Am, I not,
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: and very surely do I not dream. But to morrow
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: I die, and to day I would unburthen my soul,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: My immediate purpose, Sister, place before the world, plainly, succinctly,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and without comment a series of mere household events. In
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: their consequences. These events have terrified, have tortured, have destroyed me.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: They have presented little but horror to many. They will
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: seem less terrible than Baroques. Hereafter, perhaps some intellect may
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: than my own, which will perceive in the circumstances I
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: detail with awe nothing more than an ordinary succession of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: very natural causes and effects. From my infancy, I was
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: tenderness of heart was even so conspicuosus as to make
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: great variety of pets. With these I spent most of
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: my time, and never was so happy as when feeding
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: and in my manhood. I derived from it one of
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: in the unselfish and self sacrificing love of a brute
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: which goes directly to the heart of him who has
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: fidelity of mere man. I married early, and was happy
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: We had birds, goldfish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: and a cat. This latter was a remarkably large and
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: to the ancient popular notion which regarded all black cats
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: upon this point, And I mention the matter at all
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: for no better reason than that it happens just now
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: to be remembered. Pluto, this was the cat's name. Was
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: he attended me wherever I went about the house. It
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: following me through the streets. Our friendship lasted in this
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: manner for several years, during which my general temperament and character,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: through the instrumentality of the fiend intemperance, had I blush
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: to confess it experienced a radical alteration for the worse.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: I grew day by day more moody, more irritable, more
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to feel the change in my disposition. I not only
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: neglected but ill used them. For Pluto, however, I still
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: or even the dog when by accident or through affection,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: For what disease is like alcohol, And at length even Pluto,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: who was now becoming old and consequently somewhat peevish, Even
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: One night, returning home, much intoxicated from one of my
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: haunts about tone, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I seized him when it has frighted my violence. He
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: myself no longer. My original soul seemed at once to
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: take its flight from my body, and a more than
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: fiendish malevolence gin nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen knife. Opened it,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: one of its eyes from the socket. I blush, I burn,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I shudder while I pin the damnable atrocity. When reason
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: returned with the morning, when I had slept off the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: fumes of the Knight's debauch, I experienced a sentiment half
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of horror, half of remorse for the crime of which
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: I had been guilty. But it was at best a
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: memory of the deed. In the meantime, the cat slowly
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: recovered the socket of a lost eye, presented, it is true,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: any pain. He went about the house as usual, but
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I had so much of my old heart left as
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the part of a creature which had once so loved me.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: But this feeling soon gave place to irritation, and then came,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow. The spirit
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: of perverseness of this spirit, philosophy takes no account. Yet
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I am not more sure that my soul lives than
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: of the human heart, one of the indivisible primary faculties.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Are sentiments which give direction to the character of man
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: who has not a hundred times found himself committing a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: vile or a silly action for no other reason than
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: because he knows he should not. Have. We not a
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: perpetual inclination in the teeth of our best judgment to
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: violate that which is law, merely because we understand it
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: to be such. This spirit of perverseness, I say, came
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: the soul to vex itself, to offer violence to its
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: own nature, to do wrong for the wrong sake, only
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: and hung it to the limb of a tree. Hung
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: the bitterest remorse at my heart. Hung it because I
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: knew that it had loved me, and because I felt
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: it had given me no reason of offense. Hung it
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: because I knew that in so doing I was committing
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: a sin, a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: immortal soul as to place it if such a thing
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: were possible, even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: of the most merciful and most terrible God. On the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: night of the day on which this cruel deed was done,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: The curtains of my bed were in flames, the whole
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: a servant, and myself made our escape from the conflagration.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair. I am above
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and effect between the disaster and the atrocity. But I
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: am detailing a chain of facts, and wish not to
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: exception had fallen in. The exception was found in a
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: compartment wall not very thick, which stood about the middle
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: of the house, and against which had rested the head
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: of my bed. The plastering had here in great measure
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: resisted the action of the fire, a fact which I
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: attributed to its having been recently spread about this wall.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: A dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: be examining a particular portion of it with very minute
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: and eager attention the words strange, singular, and other similar expressions.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Excited by curiosity, I approached and saw, as if graven
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: in bar relief, upon the white surface, the figure of
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: truly marvelous. There was a rope about the animal's neck
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: when I first beheld this apparition, for I could scarcely
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: record it as less. My wonder and my terror were extreme,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: I remembered had been hung in a garden adjacent to
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: the house. Upon the alarm of fire, This garden had
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: been immediately filled by the crowd, by some one of
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: whom the animal must have been cut from the tree
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: and thrown through an open window into my chamber. This
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: had probably been done with the view of arousing me
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: spread plaster, the lime of which, with the flames and
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portrait
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: as I saw it. Although I thus readily accounted to
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And during this period there came back into my spirit
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: a half sentiment that seemed but was not remorse. I
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: went so far as to regret the loss of the animal,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: and to look about me among the vile haunts which
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: I now habitually frequented for another pet of the same
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: species and of somewhat similar appearance with which to supply
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: its place. One night, as I sat half stupefied in
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: a din of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: drawn to some black object reposing upon the head of
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: one of the immense hogsheads of gin or of rum,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: which constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: fact that I had not sooner perceived the object. Thereupon
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: I approached it and touched it with my hand. It
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: was a black cat, a very large one, fully as
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: portion of his body, but this cat had a large,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: although indefinite, splotch of white covering nearly the whole region
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred, loudly,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then,
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: was the very creature of which I was in search.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: but this person made no claim to it, knew nothing
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: of it, had never seen it before. I continued my caresses,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: and when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: reached the house, it domesticated itself at once and became
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: immediately a great favorite with my wife. For my own part,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I soon found a dislike to it arising within me.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: But I know not how or why. It was its
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: evident fondness from myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: of hatred. I avoided the creature, a certain sense of shame,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty preventing
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: me from physically abusing it. I did not for some
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: weeks strike or otherwise violently ill use it. But gradually,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: very gradually, I came to look upon it with unutterable
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: loathing and to flee silently from its odious presence, as
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: from the breath of a pestilence. What added no doubt
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to my hatred of the beast was the discovery, on
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: it also had been deprived of one of its eyes.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: as I have already said, possessed in a high degree
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: that humanity of feeling, which had once been my distinguishing
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: trait and the source of many of my syphilist and
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: purest pleasures. With my aversion to this cat, however, its
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: its loathsome caresses. If I rose to walk, it would
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: in this manner to my breast. At such times, although
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: yet withheld from doing so, partly by a memory of
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: my former crime, but chiefly, let me confess it at
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: once by absolute dread of the beast. This dread was
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: not exactly a dread of physical evil, and yet I
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: should be at a loss how otherwise to define it.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: I am almost ashamed to own. Yes, even in this
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: Felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own that the
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: terror and horror with which the animal inspired me had
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: been heightened by one of the merest chimeras it would
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: be possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: more than once to the character of the mark of
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: white hair of which I have spoken, and which constituted
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: although large, had been originally very indefinite, but by slow
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: degrees degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: my reasons struggled to reject this fanciful it had at
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: length assumed a rigorous distickness of outline. It was now
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: the representation of an object that I shudder to and
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: for this above all I loathed and dreaded, and would
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: have ridden myself of the monster, had I dared it
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: was now, I say, the image of a hideous, of
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: a ghastly thing, of the gallows, oh mournful and terrible
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: engine of horror and of crime, of agony and of death.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: mere humanity, and a brute beast whose fellow I had
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: contemptuously destroyed, A brute beast to work out for me,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: for me, a man fashioned in the image of the
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: High God, so much of insufferable woe, alas neither by
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: day or by night knew I the blessing of rest anymore.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: During the former, the creature left me no moment alone,
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: And in the latter I started hourly from dreams of
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: unutterable fear to find the hot breath of the thing
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: upon my face, and its vast weight and incarnate nightmare
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: that I had no power to shake off, incumbent eternally
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: upon my heart. Beneath the pressure of torments such as these,
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: thoughts became my sole intimate, the darkest and most evil thoughts,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: the moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: all things and of all mankind, while from the sudden,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: frequent and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: now blindly abandoned myself. My uncomplaining wife, alas was the
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: most most usual and the most patient of sufferers. One
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: day she accompanied me upon some household errand into the
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: an axe and forgetting in my wrath the childish dread
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: which had hitherto stayed my hand. I aimed a blow
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: with the animal, which of course would have proved instantly
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: her brain. She fell down upon the spot without a groan.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: This hideous murder accomplished. I set myself forthwith and with
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: knew that I could not remove it from the house,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: either by day or by night, without the risk of
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: At one period, I thought of cutting the corpse into
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: minute fragments and destroying them by fire. At another I
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: the well in the yard, about packing it in a box
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: a porter to take it from the house. Finally, I
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: either of these. I determined to wall it up in
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages are
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: recorded to have walled up their victims for a purpose
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: such as this. The cellar was well adapted. Its walls
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: a projection caused by a false chimney or fireplace that
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: had been filled up and made to resemble the rest
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: and wall the whole up as before, so that no
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this calculation I
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: was not deceived by means of a crow bar. I
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: easily dislodged the bricks, and having carefully deposited the body
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: against the inner wall, I propped it in that position,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: while with little trouble I relaid the whole structure as
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: it originally stood, Having procured mortar, sand and hair with
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: be distinguished from the old, and with this I very
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: I looked around triumphantly and said to myself, here, at least,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: then my labor has not been in vain. My next
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: step was to look for the beast which had been
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: the cause of so much wretchedness, For I had at
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: length firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: been able to meet with it at the moment, there
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: could have been no doubt of its fate. But it
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: in my present mood. It is impossible to describe or
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: to imagine the deep, the blissful sense of relief which
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: It did not make its appearance during the night, and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: thus for one night at least since its introduction into
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: the house, I soundly and tranquility slept. I slept, even
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: with a burden of murder upon my soul. The second
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Not once again. I breathed as a freeman. The monster
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: in terror had fled the premises, forever I should behold
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: it no more. My happiness was supreme. The guilt of
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: had been made, but the please had been readily answered.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Even a search had been instituted, but of course nothing
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: as secured. Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: party of the police came very unexpectedly into the house
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises secure. However,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: in the inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: For the third or fourth time they descended into the cellar,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro The
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: burned to say but one word by way of triumph,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness. Gentlemen,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: I said at last, as the party ascended the steps,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: I delight to have allaid your suspicions. I wish you
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: all health and a little more courtesy By the bye, gentlemen, this,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: this is a very well constructed house. In the rabid
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: uttered at all, I may say an excellently well constructed house.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: These walls are you going, gentlemen, These walls are solidly
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: put together. And here, through the mere frenzy of bravado,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I rapped heavily with a cane, which I held in
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: my hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork, behind
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: of the arch fiend. No sooner had the reverberation of
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: a voice from within the tomb, by a cry, at
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: and then quickly swelling into one long, loud and continuous scream,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: utterly anomalous and inhuman, a howl, a wailing shriek half
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: of horror and half of triumph, such as might have
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: the damned in their agony, and of the demons that
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: exult in the damnation of my own thoughts. It is
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: folly to speak swooning. I staggered to the opposite wall.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: For one instant. The party upon the stairs remained motionless
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: a dozen stout arms were tarling at the wall. It
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: the hideous beast, whose craft had seduced me into murder,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: I had walled the monster up within the tomb and
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: of the Black Cat, story number four of six Creepy
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. This LibriVox recording is in
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: the public domain. The Raven. Once upon a midnight, dreary,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: and curious volume of forgotten allure. While I nodded, nearly napping,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: at my chamber door. 'tis a visitor, I muttered, tapping
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more. Ah, distinctly,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: I remember. It was in the bleak December, and each
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I wished the morrow. Vainly I had sought to borrow
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: from my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Leonore,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: for the rare and radiant maiden, whom the angel's name
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Lenore nameless here for evermore. And the silken, sad, uncertain
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, filled me with
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: fantastic terrors never felt before. So that now to still
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, tis visitor
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: in treating entrance at my chamber door, some late visitor
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: in treating entrance at my chamber door. This it is,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: and nothing more. Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating. Then
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: no longer sir, said I or madam. True your forgiveness,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: I implore. But the fact is I was napping, and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: tapping tapping at my chamber door, that I scarce was
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: sure I heard you. Here. I opened wide the door,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness, peering long,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams. No mortal
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: ever dared to dream before. But the silence was unbroken,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: and the stillness gave no token. And the only word
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: there spoken was the whispered word leonore. This I whispered,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: and an echo murmured back the word leonore, merely this
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: and nothing more, back into the chamber, turning all my soul,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: then me burning. Soon again, I heard a tapping somewhat
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: louder than before. Surely, said I, surely that is something
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: at my window. Lettice. Let me see then what thereat is,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: and this mystery explore. Let my heart be still a moment,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: And this mystery explore tis the wind, and nothing more
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: open here. I flung the shutter wind with many a
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: flirt and flutter. In there stepp'd a stately raven of
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: not a minute stopp'd or stayed he, but with mien
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: of Lord or lady, perched above my chamberdoor, perched upon
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: a bust of palace, just above my chamberdoor, perched and sat,
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: and nothing more then this ebony bird, beguiling my sad
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: fancy into smiling by the grave and stern decorum of
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the countenance at war. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, Thou,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: I said, art sure, no craven, ghastly grim, an ancient
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: raven wandering from the knightly shore. Tell me what thy
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: lordly name is on the Knight's Plutonian shore, quoth the
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: raven never more much. I marveled this ungainly fowl to
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: hear discourse so plainly, though its answer little meaning, little
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: relevancy bore. For we cannot help agreeing that no living
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: human being ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: his chamberdour bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: his chamberdour with such name as nevermore. But the raven,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: as if his sould. In that one word, he did
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: out poor nothing further than he uttered, not a feather.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Then he fluttered till I scarcely more than muttered other
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: friends have flown before. On the morrow he will leave me,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: as my hopes have flown before. Then the bird said
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: never more. Startled at the stillness broken by reply so
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: aptly spoken, doubtless, said I what it utters is its
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: only stock and store, caught from some unhappy master, whom
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: unmerciful disaster followed fast, and followed faster till his songs
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: one burden bore till the dirges of his hope, that
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: melancholy burden bore of never never more. But the raven
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: still beguiling all my fancy into smiling straight, I wheeled
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bye and door.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking fancy,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of your, What
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of your
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: meant in croaking? Nevermore? This I sat engaged in guessing,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: but no syllable expressing to the fowl, whose fiery eyes
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: now burned into my bosom'score. This and more I sat divining,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: with my head at ease, reclining on the cushion's velvet
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: lining that the lamp like gloated oar, but whose velvet
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: violet lining with the lamp like gloating oar, she shall
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: press ah nevermore. Then methought, the air grew denser, perfumed
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: from an unseen censer swung by seraphim, whose footfalls tinkled
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: on the tufted floor. Wretch, I cried, Thy God has
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: lent thee by these angels. He has sent thee respite, respite,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: and the penthee from thy memories of Lenore. Quaff, oh,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore. Quote
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: the raven nevermore Prophet said, I think of evil prophets,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: still of bird or devil, Whether tempter center, whether Tempest
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: tossed thee here is sure, doesol it he? Yet all
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: undaunted on this desert land, enchanted on this home by horror, haunted.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Tell me, truly, I implore, Is there is there balmb
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: in Gilead, Tell me, tell me I implore. Quote the raven
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: Nevermore Prophet said, I thing of evil prophet, still a bird,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: a devil by that heaven that bends above us, by
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: that God we both adore. Tell this soul with sorrow
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: laden if within the distant aiden it shall clasp face
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: sainted maiden, whom the angels name Leonore clasp a rare
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Leonore. Quote the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Raven nevermore, be that word our sign of parting bird,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: our fiend, I shriek up starting, get thee back into
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: the timpest, and the knights for TONI in shore. Leave
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: no black plume as a token of that lie Thy
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: soul hath spoken. Leave my lonelinessn't broken. Quit the bust
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: above my door, Take thy beak from out my heart,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: and take thy form from off my door. Quote the
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: Raven nevermore, and the raven never flitting still, is sitting still,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: is sitting on the pallid bust of palace just above
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: my chamberdour and his eyes have all the seeming of
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: a demon's that is dreaming. And the lamplight o'er him
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: shall be lifted nevermore. End of the Raven story, number
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: five of six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allen Poe. This
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The cask of
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: a Mantilliaro The thousand injuries of Fortunado I had borne
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: as best I could. But when he ventured upon insult,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: I vowed revenge. You houdo be well, you who so
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however,
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: that I gave utterance to a threat at length I
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: would be avenged. This was a point definitely settled, But
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: the very definiteness with which it was resolved precluded the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: It must be understood that neither by word nor deed
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: had I given Fortunato caused to doubt my good will continued,
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: as was my wont to smile in his face, and
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: he did not perceive that my spile now was at
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: the thought of his immolation. He had a weak point,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: this Fortunato. Although in other regards he was a man
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: to be respected and even feared, he prided himself on
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: For the most part, their enthusiasm is adopted to suit
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: the time and opportunity to practice imposture upon the British
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: and Austrian millionaires in painting and jimmery. Fortunato, like his countrymen,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: was a quack, but in the matter of old wines
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: he was sincere. In this respect. I did not differ
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: from him materially skillful in the Italian vintages myself, and
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: bought largely whenever I could. It was about dusk one evening,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: encountered my friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: he had been drinking much. The man wore motley, he
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: had on a tight fitting party striped dress, and his
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: was so pleased to see him that I thought I
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: should never have done wringing his hand. I said to him,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: my dear Fortunato, you are luckily met, how remarkably well
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: you are looking to day. But I have received a
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: pipe of what passes for a Monthiliado, and I have
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: my doubts. How said he, a Monthillioto a pipe him possible,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: And in the middle of the carnival I have my doubts,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: I replied, and I was silly enough to pay the
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: full a monthiliado price without consulting you in the matter.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: You were not to be found, and I was fearful
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: of losing a bargain a montiado. I have my doubts
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: a montiato, and I must satisfy them a montiliado. As
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: you are engaged. I am on my way to Luceesie.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: If anyone has a critical turn, it is he. He
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: will tell me. Luceesi cannot tell a montiliado from sherry,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: and yet some fools will have it that his taste
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: is a match for your own. Come, let us go
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: whither to your vaults, my friend. No, I will not
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luceesi,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I have no engagement. Come, my friend, No, it is
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: not the engagement but the severe coal with which I
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp, they
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: are encrusted with niter. Let us go. Nevertheless, the cold
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: is merely nothing a montioto you have been imposed upon.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: As for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish sherry from a montiliato.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: Thus speaking Fortunato possessed himself of my arm, putting on
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquill over
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: closely about my person. I suffered him to hurry me
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home. They
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: had absconded to make merry an honor of the time.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: I had told them that I should not return until
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: stir from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: to insure their immediate disappearance one and all. As soon
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: as my back was turned, I took from the wisconces
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: to Flambeaux, and, giving one to Fortunato, bowed him through
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: several suites of rooms to the archway that led into
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase,
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: at length to the foot of the descent, and stood
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: together on the damp ground to the catacombs of the Montressors.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: upon his cap jingled as he strode the pipe. Said he,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: It is farther on, said I, But observed the white
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: webwork which gleams from these cavern walls. He turned towards
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: me and looked into my eye with two fill in
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: the orbs that distilled the room of intoxication. Kniter, he asked.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: At length, Kniter, I replied, how long have you had
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: that cough? My poor friend found it impossible to reply
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: for many minutes. It is nothing, he said. At last, come,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: I said, with decision, we will go back. Your health
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved. You are
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: happy as once I was. You are a man to
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: be missed for me. It is no matter. We will
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: go back. You will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: there is LUCESI enough, he said. The cough is a
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: mere nothing. It will not kill me. I shall not
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: die of a cough. True, true, I replied, And indeed
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily. But you
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: should use all proper caution. A draft of this medoc
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: will defend us from the dance. Here I knocked off
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: the neck of a bottle, which I drew from a
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: long row of its fellows that lay upon the mold drank,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: I said, presenting him the wine. He raised it to
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: me familiarly, while his bells jingled. I drink, he said,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: to the buried that repose around us, and I to
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: your long life. He again took my arm and we proceeded.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: These vaults, he said, are extensive. The Montressors, I replied,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: were a great and numerous family. I forget your arms.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: A huge human foot door in a field azure, the
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: the heel, and the motto Nemo may impune la chest good,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: he said. The wine sparkled in his eyes, and the
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the meddock.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: and puncheons, intermingling into the innermost recesses of the catacombs.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: I paused again, and this time I made bold to
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. The niter,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: I said, see it increases. It hangs like moss upon
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: of moisture trickle among the bones. Come we will go
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: back ere. It is too late. You are cough. It
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: is nothing, he said. Let us go on, but first
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: another draft of the medlock. I broke and reached him
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: a flagon of de grave. He emptied it at a breath.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation. I did not understand,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: a grotesque one. You do not comprehend, he said, not I,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: I replied, Then you are not of the brotherhood. How
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: you are not of the Masons? Yes, yes, I said, yes, yes,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: you impossible a Mason? A Mason, I replied. A sign
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: He said, it is this, I answered, producing a trowel
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: from beneath the folds of my roquol arm you yes,
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: he exclaimed, recalling a few paces. But let us proceed
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: to the montiliado. Be it, so, I said, replacing the
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: search of the amontiliado. We passed through a range of
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again. Arrived at
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. At the
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: most remote end of the crypt there appeared another, less spacious.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the vault overhead, in the fashion of the Great Catacombs
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: been thrown down and lay promission queously upon the earth,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: forming at one point a mound of some size. Within
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: the wall. Thus exposed by the displacing of the bones,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: we perceived a still interior recess in depth about four
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: feet in width three in height six or seven. It
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: seemed to have been constructed for no especial use in itself,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite. It
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: was in vain that Fortunato uplifting his dull torch, endeavored
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: The feeble light did not enable us to see proceed
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: I said, herein is the amuntliado. As for Luceesi, he
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: is an Ignoramus, interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: he had reached the extremity of the niche, and, finding
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: his progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: moment more, and I had fettered him to the granite.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: about two feet horizontally. From one of these depended a
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: short chain, from the other a padlock, throwing the lynx
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: about his waist. It was but the work of a
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: few seconds to secure it. He was too much astonished
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: to resist. Withdrawing the key, I stepped back from the recess.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: Pass your hand, I said, over the wall. You cannot
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: help feeling the niter. Indeed, it is very damp. Once more,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: let me implore you to return. No, then I must
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: positively leave you. But I must first render you all
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: the little attentions in my power. The amnti yoto ejaculated
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment. True, I
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: replied the a monthiyodo. As I said, these words. I
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: busied myself among the piles of bones of which I
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: have before spoken, throwing them aside. I soon uncovered a
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials, and
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: with the aid of my travel, I began vigorously to
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: wall up the entrance of the niche. I had scarcely
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: laid the first tear of my masonry when I discovered
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: a low, moaning cry from the depth of the recess.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: It was not the cry of a drunken man. There
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: second tier, and the third and the fourth, and then
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: lasted for several minutes, during which that I might hearken
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: to it with the more satisfaction, I seized my labors
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: and sat down upon the bones. When at last the
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: clanking subsided, I resumed the trowel and finished without interruption
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: again paused and holding the flambeaux over the mason work,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: threw a few feeble rays upon the figure. Within a
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: For a brief moment, I hesitated. I trembled, unsheathing my rapier.
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: I began to grope with it about the recess. But
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: him who clamored. I re echoed, I ate it. I
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: and the clamorer grew still. It was now midnight, and
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: my task was drawing to a close. I had completed
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: the eighth, the knife, and the tenth tear. I had
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: finished a portion of the last, and the eleventh. There
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: I struggled with his weight. I placed it partially in
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: its destined position. But now there came from out the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon my head.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: difficulty in recognizing as that of the noble Fortunato. The
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: voice said, ha ah ha, a very good joke, indeed
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: an excellent jest. We will have many hair rich laugh
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: about it. At the palazzo. He over our wine. He
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: he the Amontillado, I said, he, yes, the Amontiioto. But
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: is it not getting late? Will they not be awaiting
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: us at the palazzo, the lady Fortunato and the rest.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: Let us be gone? Yes, I said, Let us be gone?
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: What the love of God montresor? Yes, I said, for
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: the love of God. But to these words I hearkened
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: aloud Fortunato. No answer. I called again for Junato. No answer.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: Still I thrust the torch through the remaining aperture and
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: let it fall within. There came forth in return only
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick. On
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: make an end of my labor. I forced the last
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: stone into its position. I plastered it up against the
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: new masonry. I re erected the old rampart of bones.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: For the half of a century, no mortal has disturbed them.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: In Pache Reguiescot end of the Cask of a Montiliado,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: story number six of six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allan Poe.
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Berenice di
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: chebant Mihi sodales see seful Krumami k vs Tarim kros
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: mayas ali quantulum fore levatas aben zayat. Misery is manifold.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: The wretchedness of earth is multiform, overreaching the wide horizon
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: as the rainbow. Its eues are as various as the
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: hues of that arch, as distinct to yet as intimately blended,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow. How is it
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow. But
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, So
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: the agonies which r have their origin in the ecstasies
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: which might have been my baptismal name is Egaeus. That
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: of my family I will not mention. Yet there are
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: no towers in the land more time honored than my gloomy,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: gray hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: of visionaries, and in many striking particulars in the character
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: of the family mansion, in the frescoes of the chief saloon,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: in the tapestries of the dormitories, in the chiseling of
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: some buttresses in the armory, but more especially in the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: gallery of antique paintings, in the fashion of the library chamber,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: and lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: There is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: the recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: and with its volumes, of which latter I will say
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: no more. Here died by mother. Herein was I born.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: But it is mere idleness to say that I had
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: not lived before that the soul has no previous existence.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: You deny it. Let us not argue the matter convinced myself,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: of aerial forms of spiritual and meaning, eyes of sounds
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: musical yet sad, a remembrance which will not be excluded,
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady, and
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: exist in that chamber. Was I born thus awaking from
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: the long night of what seemed but was not nonentity,
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: at once into the very regions of fairyland, into a
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: palace of imagination, into the wild dominions of monastic thought
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: and erudition. It is not singular that I gazed around
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: me with a startled and ardent eye, that I loitered
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: away my boyhood in books and dissipated my youth in reverie.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: But it is singular that, as years rolled away and
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: of my father's it is wonderful what stagnation there fell
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: upon the springs of my mind life, wonderful how total
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: The realities of the world affected me as visions, and
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: of dreams became, in turn not the material of my
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: everyday existence, but in very deed, that existence utterly and
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: solely in itself. Betanie and I were cousins, and we
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: grew I ill of health and buried in gloom. She agile, graceful,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: and overflowing with energy, hers the ramble on the hillside,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: mine the studies of the cloister. I living within my
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: own heart and addicted body and soul to the most
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: intense and painful meditation. She roaming carelessly through life, with
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: no thought of the shadows in her path or the
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: silent flight of the raven winged owers. Berenithe. I call
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: upon her name, Berenice, and from the gray ruins of memory,
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound. Ah.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Vividly is her image before me now as in the
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: early days of her light heartedness and joy, Oh gorgeous
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: yet fantastic beauty, Oh sylph amid the shrubberies of Ornheim
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: o Naiad among its fountains. And then then all is
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: mystery and terror and a tale which should not be told. Disease,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: a fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame,
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: and even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: chaining swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: her character, and in a manner the most subtle and terrible,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: disturbing even the identity of her person alas the destroyer
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: came and went, and the victim where is she? I
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: knew her not, or knew her no longer as Berenice.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Among the numerous train of melodies superinducted by that fatal
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: and primary one which affected a revolution of so horrible
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: its nature, a species of epilepsy, not unfrequently terminating in
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: trance itself, trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: which her manner of recovery was, in most instances startlingly abrupt.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Means time, my own disease, for I have been told
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: that I should call it by no other appellation. My
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: own disease then grew rapidly upon me and assumed finally
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: a monomaniacal character of a novel and extraordinary form, hourly
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: and momently gaining vigor, and at length obtaining over me
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: is more than probable that I am not understood, But
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: I fear indeed that it is in no manner possible
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: to convey to the mind of the merely general reader
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: which which, in my case, the powers of meditation, not
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: to speak, technically busied and buried themselves in the contemplation
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: of even the most ordinary objects of the universe. To
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: muse for long, unwearied hours with my attention riveted to
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: some frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: of a book, To become absorbed for the better part
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: of a summer's day in a quaint shadow, falling aslant
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: upon the tapestry or upon the floor, to lose myself
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: a lamp are the embers of a fire, To dream
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: away whole days over the perfume of a flower, To
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: the mind, to lose all sense of motion or physical
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: existence by means of absolute bodily quiescence, long and obstinately
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: persevered in such were a few of the most common
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: and least pernicious vaggarees induced by a condition of the
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: mental faculties, not indeed altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: to anything like analysis or explanation. Yet, let me not
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: by objects in their own nature frivolous must not be
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: It was not, even as might be at first supposed,
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primary,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: early and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance,
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: the dreamer or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom until at the
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: conclusion of a day dream, often replete with luxury, he
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: finds the incitimentum, or first cause of his musings entirely
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: vanished and forgotten. In my case, the primary object was
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: invariably frivolous, although assuming through the medium of my distempered
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: vision a refracted and unreal importance, few deductions, if any,
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: were made, and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: original object as a center. The meditations were never pleasurable,
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: and at the term gamination of the reverie, the first cause,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 1: so far from being out of sight, had attained the
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised,
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: were with me, as I have said before, the attentive,
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: and are with the day dreamer. The speculative my books
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: irritate the disorder partook it, will be perceived largely in
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: their imaginative and inconsequential nature of the characteristic qualities of
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: of the noble Italian Celius secundus curio de amplitudine biatti
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: regni de Saint Austin's great work The City of God,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: and Tertullian's Des Carne Christi, in which the paradoxical sentence
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: mortuses deiphilus credibile esquia ineptumest et sepul tusresoraxit seratum est
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: quia impossibile est occupied my undivided time for many weeks
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: of laborious and fruitless investigation. Thus it will appear that,
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: bore resemblance to that ocean crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hepestion,
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: which steadily resisted the attacks of human violence, and the
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: to the touch of the flower called aspidel. And although
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: to a careless thinker it might appear a matter be
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: undoubt that the alteration produced by her unhappy melody in
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: the mortal condition of Berenice would afford me many objects
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: nature I have been at some trouble in explaining. Yet
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: such was not in any degree the case. In the
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity indeed gave me pain, and,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: and bitterly upon the wonder working means by which so
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: and were such as would have occurred under similar circumstances
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: to the ordinary mass of mankind, true to its own character.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: My disorder reveled in the less important, but more startling
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice, in the
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity during
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty. Most surely I
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: feelings with me had never been of the heart, and
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: of the early morning, among the trellised shadows of the
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: forest at noonday, and in the silence of my library
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: had seen her not as the living and breathing Berenice,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: but as the bereonese of a dream, Not as a
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: being of the earth earthy, but as the abstraction of
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: such a being, Not as a thing to admire but
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: to analyze, Not as an object of love, but as
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: a theme of the most abstruse. Although dulcatory speculation, and
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: now now I shuddered in her presence and grew pale
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: at her approach, Yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition,
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: I called to mind that she had loved me long,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: and in an evil moment I spoke to her of marriage,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: and at length the period of our nuptials was approaching.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: When upon an afternoon in the winter of the year,
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: one of those unseasonably warm, calm and misty days which
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: are the nurse of the beautiful Halcion, I sat and
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: sat as I thought, alone in the inner apartment of
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: the library. But uplifting my eyes, I saw that Bennice
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: stood before me. Was it my own excited imagination, or
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: the misty influence of the atmosphere, or the uncertain twilight
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: of the chamber, or the gray draperies which fell around
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: her figure that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct,
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: an outline I could not tell. She spoke no word,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: and I not for worlds what I have uttered, A
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: syllable an ICEA chill ran through my frame, A sense
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: of insufferable anxiety oppressed me, A consuming curiosity pervaded my soul.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: And sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: alas its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: the former being lurked in any single line of the contour.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: My burning glances at length fell upon the face. The
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: forehead was high and very pale and singularly placid, and
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: the once jetty hair fell partially over it and overshadowed
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: yellow and jarring discordantly in their fantastic character. With the
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: raining melancholy of the countenance, the eyes were lifeless and lustreless,
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: and seemingly Pupilus and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips.
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: They parted, and in a smile of peculiar meaning. The
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: teeth of the changed prenis disclosed themselves slowly to my view,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: would to God that I had never beheld them, or
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: that having done so, I had died. The shutting of
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: a door disturbed me, and looking up, I found that
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: my cousin had departed from the chamber, but from the
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: disordered chamber of my brain had not alas departed, and
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: would not be driven away the white and ghastly spectrum
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: of the teeth, not a speck on their surface, not
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: a shade of their enamel, not an indenture in their edges,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: but what that period of her smile had sufficed to
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: brand in upon my memory. I saw them now, even
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: more unequivocally than I beheld them. Then, the teeth, the teeth,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: they were here and there and everywhere, and visibly and
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: palpably before me, long, narrow and excessively white, with the
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: external world. I had no thoughts but for the teeth.
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: For these I longed with a frenzied desire. All other
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: they alone, were present to the mental eye, and they,
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: in their soul individuality, became the essence of my mental life.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: I held them in every light, I turned them in
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiaries.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: in imagination a sensitive and sensient power, and, even when
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression of
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: Mademoiselle Saul. It has been well, said Quito sipa tal
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: des sit dement and berenis I more seriously believed Quito said,
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: don't deal does he day does e day ah? Here
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: was the idiotic thought that destroyed me des e day ah.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: Therefore it was that I coveted them so madly. I
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace,
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: in giving me back to reason, and evening closed in
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: upon me. Thus, and then the darkness came, and tarried
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: and went and the day again dawned, and the mists
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: of a second night were now gathering around. And still
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: I sat motionless in that solitary room, And still I sat,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: buried in meditation, And still the phantasma of the teeth
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: maintained its terrible ascendancy, as with the most vivid, hideous distinctness,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: It floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: the chamber. At length, there broke in upon my dreams
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: a cry as of horror and dismay. And thereunto after
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled vises, intermingled with
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I rose
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: of the library, saw standing out in the ante chamber
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: Bedonice was no more. She had been seized with epilepsy
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: in the early morning. And now at the closing in
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and all the preparations for the burial were completed. I
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: found myself sitting in the library, and again, sitting there alone,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: it seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight,
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: and I was well aware that since the setting of
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: the sun, benanice had been interred. But of that dreary
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: period which intervened, I had no positive, at least no
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror. Horror
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity.
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: It was a fearful page in the record of my existence,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: written all over with dim and hideous and unintelligible recollections.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: I strived to decipher them, but in vain while ever
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: and anon like the spirit of a departed sound, the
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: What was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me. What was it?
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character,
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: and I had seen it frequently before, for it was
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: the property of the family physician. But how we came
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: there upon my table? And why did I shudder? In
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: regarding it. These things were in no manner to be
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: accounted for. And my eyes at length dropped the open
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 1: The words were the singular but simple ones of the
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: poet ebn zayat djebant mihi sodales seize pol kremamikhevizi tarim
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: kurasmeas ali quantulum fore levatas. Why then, as I perused them,
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end,
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: There came a light tap at the library door, and
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: pale as the tenant of a tomb a menial entered
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: spoke to me, voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: said he some broken sentence? As I heard, he told
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: of a wild cry, disturbing the silence of the night,
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: of the gathering together of the household, of a search
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: in the direction of the sound. And then his tones
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: grew thrillingly distinct, as he whispered me of a violated grave,
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: of a disfigured body, enshrouded yet still breathing, still palpitating,
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: still alive. He pointed to gorments. They were muddy and
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: gently by the hand. It was indented with the impress
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: of human nails. He directed my attention to some object
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: It was a spade with a shriek. I bounded to
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: the able and grasped the box that lay upon it,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: but I could not force it open, and in my tremor,
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: it slipped from my hands and fell heavily and burst
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: into pieces. And from it, with a rattling sound, there
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: two small, white and ivory looking substances that were scattered
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: to and fro about the floor. End of Berenice. End
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: of six Creepy Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. These stories
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: recorded by phil Shinever in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in January
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: of two thousand thirteen.