It was a chilly November afternoon. I had just consummated an
unusually hearty dinner, of which the dyspeptic truffe formed not
the least important item, and was sitting alone in the dining-room
with my feet upon the fender and at my elbow a small table which I had
rolled up to the fire, and upon which were some apologies for dessert,
with some miscellaneous bottles of wine, spirit, and liqueur. In the
morning I had been reading Glover’s Leonidas, Wilkie’s Epigoniad,
Lamartine’s Pilgrimage, Barlow’s Columbiad, Tuckerman’s Sicily,
and Griswold’s Curiosities, I am willing to confess, therefore, that
I now felt a little stupid. I made effort to arouse myself by frequent
aid of Lafitte, and all failing, I betook myself to a stray newspaper
in despair. Having carefully perused the column of “Houses to let,”
and the column of “Dogs lost,” and then the columns of “Wives and
apprentices runaway,” I attacked with great resolution the editorial
matter, and reading it from beginning to end without understanding a
syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so
re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more
satisfactory result. I was about throwing away in disgust

  This folio of four pages, happy work
  Which not even critics criticise,

when I felt my attention somewhat aroused by the paragraph which
follows:

“The avenues to death are numerous and strange. A London paper
mentions the decease of a person from a singular cause. He was playing
at ‘puff the dart,’ which is played with a long needle inserted in
some worsted, and blown at a target through a tin tube. He placed the
needle at the wrong end of the tube, and drawing his breath strongly
to puff the dart forward with force, drew the needle into his throat.
It entered the lungs, and in a few days killed him.”

Upon seeing this I fell into a great rage, without exactly knowing
why. “This thing,” I exclaimed, “is a contemptible falsehood–a poor
hoax–the lees of the invention of some pitiable penny-a-liner, of
some wretched concocter of accidents in Cocaigne. These fellows
knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age set their wits to work
in the imagination of improbable possibilities, of odd accidents as
they term them, but to a reflecting intellect (like mine, I added, in
parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my
nose), to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it
seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these
‘odd accidents’ is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part,
I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the
’singular’ about it.”

“Mein Gott, den, vat a vool you bees for dat!” replied one of the most
remarkable voices I ever heard. At first I took it for a rumbling in
my ears–such as a man sometimes experiences when getting very
drunk–but upon second thought, I considered the sound as more nearly
resembling that which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with a big
stick; and, in fact, this I should have concluded it to be, but for
the articulation of the syllables and words. I am by no means
naturally nervous, and the very few glasses of Lafitte which I had
sipped served to embolden me a little, so that I felt nothing of
trepidation, but merely uplifted my eyes with a leisurely movement and
looked carefully around the room for the intruder. I could not,
however, perceive any one at all.

“Humph!” resumed the voice as I continued my survey, “you mus pe so
dronk as de pig den for not zee me as I zit here at your zide.”

Hereupon I bethought me of looking immediately before my nose, and
there, sure enough, confronting me at the table sat a personage
nondescript, although not altogether indescribable. His body was a
wine-pipe or a rum puncheon, or something of that character, and had a
truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity were inserted two kegs,
which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there
dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long
bottles with the necks outward for hands. All the head that I saw the
monster possessed of was one of those Hessian canteens which resemble
a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen
(with a funnel on its top like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes)
was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hole toward myself; and
through this hole, which seemed puckered up like the mouth of a very
precise old maid, the creature was emitting certain rumbling and
grumbling noises which he evidently intended for intelligible talk.

“I zay,” said he, “you mos pe dronk as de pig, vor zit dare and not
zee me zit ere; and I zay, doo, you mos pe pigger vool as de goose,
vor to dispelief vat iz print in de print. ‘Tiz de troof–dat it
iz–ebery vord ob it.”

“Who are you, pray?” said I with much dignity, although somewhat
puzzled; “how did you get here? and what is it you are talking about?”

“As vor ow I com’d ere,” replied the figure, “dat iz none of your
pizziness; and as vor vat I be talking apout, I be talk apout vat I
tink proper; and as vor who I be, vy dat is de very ting I com’d here
for to let you zee for yourself.”

“You are a drunken vagabond,” said I, “and I shall ring the bell and
order my footman to kick you into the street.”

“He! he! he!” said the fellow, “hu! hu! hu! dat you can’t do.”

“Can’t do!” said I, “what do you mean? I can’t do what?”

“Ring de pell,” he replied, attempting a grin with his little
villainous mouth.

Upon this I made an effort to get up in order to put my threat into
execution, but the ruffian just reached across the table very
deliberately, and hitting me a tap on the forehead with the neck of
one of the long bottles, knocked me back into the armchair from which
I had half arisen. I was utterly astounded, and for a moment was quite
at a loss what to do. In the meantime he continued his talk.

“You zee,” said he, “it iz te bess vor zit still; and now you shall
know who I pe. Look at me! zee! I am te Angel ov te Odd.”

“And odd enough, too,” I ventured to reply; “but I was always under
the impression that an angel had wings.”

“Te wing!” he cried, highly incensed, “vat I pe do mit te wing? Mein
Gott! do you take me for a shicken?”

“No–oh, no!” I replied, much alarmed; “you are no chicken–certainly
not.”

“Well, den, zit still and pehabe yourself, or I’ll rap you again mid
me vist. It iz te shicken ab te wing, und te owl ab te wing, und te
imp ab te wing, und te head-teuffel ab te wing. Te angel ab not te
wing, and I am te Angel ov te Odd.”

“And your business with me at present is–is—-”

“My pizziness!” ejaculated the thing, “vy vat a low-bred puppy you mos
pe vor to ask a gentleman und an angel apout his pizziness!”

This language was rather more than I could bear, even from an angel;
so, plucking up courage, I seized a salt-cellar which lay within
reach, and hurled it at the head of the intruder. Either he dodged,
however, or my aim was inaccurate; for all I accomplished was the
demolition of the crystal which protected the dial of the clock upon
the mantelpiece. As for the Angel, he evinced his sense of my assault
by giving me two or three hard, consecutive raps upon the forehead as
before. These reduced me at once to submission, and I am almost
ashamed to confess that, either through pain or vexation, there came a
few tears into my eyes.

“Mein Gott!” said the Angel of the Odd, apparently much softened at my
distress; “mein Gott, te man is eder ferry dronk or ferry zorry. You
mos not trink it so strong–you mos put te water in te wine. Here,
trink dis, like a good veller, and don’t gry now–don’t!”

Hereupon the Angel of the Odd replenished my goblet (which was about a
third full of port) with a colorless fluid that he poured from one of
his hand-bottles. I observed that these bottles had labels about their
necks, and that these labels were inscribed “Kirschenwaesser.”

The considerate kindness of the Angel mollified me in no little
measure; and, aided by the water with which he diluted my port more
than once, I at length regained sufficient temper to listen to his
very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he
told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was a genius who
presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was
to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing
the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total
incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed,
so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at
all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great
length, while I merely leaned back in my chair with my eyes shut, and
amused myself with munching raisins and filiping the stems about the
room. But, by and by, the Angel suddenly construed this behavior of
mine into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched his
funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some
character, which I did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a
low bow and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in
“Gil Bias,” beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus de bon sens.

His departure afforded me relief. The very few glasses of Lafitte
that I had sipped had the effect of rendering me drowsy, and I felt
inclined to take a nap of some fifteen or twenty minutes, as is my
custom after dinner. At six I had an appointment of consequence, which
it was quite indispensable that I should keep. The policy of insurance
for my dwelling-house had expired the day before; and some dispute
having arisen it was agreed that, at six, I should meet the board of
directors of the company and settle the terms of a renewal. Glancing
upward at the clock on the mantelpiece (for I felt too drowsy to take
out my watch), I had the pleasure to find that I had still twenty-five
minutes to spare. It was half-past five; I could easily walk to the
insurance office in five minutes; and my usual siestas had never been
known to exceed five-and-twenty. I felt sufficiently safe, therefore,
and composed myself to my slumbers forthwith.

Having completed them to my satisfaction, I again looked toward the
timepiece, and was half inclined to believe in the possibility of odd
accidents when I found that, instead of my ordinary fifteen or twenty
minutes, I had been dozing only three; for it still wanted
seven-and-twenty of the appointed hour. I betook myself again to my
nap, and at length a second time awoke, when, to my utter amazement,
it still wanted twenty-seven minutes of six. I jumped up to examine
the clock, and found that it had ceased running. My watch informed me
that it was half-past seven; and, of course, having slept two hours, I
was too late for my appointment. “It will make no difference,” I said:
“I can call at the office in the morning and apologize; in the
meantime what can be the matter with the clock?” Upon examining it I
discovered that one of the raisin stems which I had been filiping
about the room during the discourse of the Angel of the Odd had flown
through the fractured crystal, and lodging, singularly enough, in the
keyhole, with an end projecting outward, had thus arrested the
revolution of the minute hand.

“Ah!” said I, “I see how it is. This thing speaks for itself. A
natural accident, such as will happen now and then!”

I gave the matter no further consideration, and at my usual hour
retired to bed. Here, having placed a candle upon a reading stand at
the bed head, and having made an attempt to peruse some pages of the
Omnipresence of the Deity, I unfortunately fell asleep in less than
twenty seconds, leaving the light burning as it was.

My dreams were terrifically disturbed by visions of the Angel of the
Odd. Methought he stood at the foot of the couch, drew aside the
curtains, and in the hollow, detestable tones of a rum puncheon,
menaced me with the bitterest vengeance for the contempt with which I
had treated him. He concluded a long harangue by taking off his
funnel-cap, inserting the tube into my gullet, and thus deluging me
with an ocean of Kirschenwaesser, which he poured in a continuous
flood, from one of the long-necked bottles that stood him instead of
an arm. My agony was at length insufferable, and I awoke just in time
to perceive that a rat had run off with the lighted candle from the
stand, but not in season to prevent his making his escape with it
through the hole, Very soon a strong, suffocating odor assailed my
nostrils; the house, I clearly perceived, was on fire. In a few
minutes the blaze broke forth with violence, and in an incredibly
brief period the entire building was wrapped in flames. All egress
from my chamber, except through a window, was cut off. The crowd,
however, quickly procured and raised a long ladder. By means of this I
was descending rapidly, and in apparent safety, when a huge hog, about
whose rotund stomach, and indeed about whose whole air and
physiognomy, there was something which reminded me of the Angel of the
Odd–when this hog, I say, which hitherto had been quietly slumbering
in the mud, took it suddenly into his head that his left shoulder
needed scratching, and could find no more convenient rubbing-post than
that afforded by the foot of the ladder. In an instant I was
precipitated, and had the misfortune to fracture my arm.

This accident, with the loss of my insurance, and with the more
serious loss of my hair, the whole of which had been singed off by the
fire, predisposed me to serious impressions, so that finally I made up
my mind to take a wife. There was a rich widow disconsolate for the
loss of her seventh husband, and to her wounded spirit I offered the
balm of my vows. She yielded a reluctant consent to my prayers. I
knelt at her feet in gratitude and adoration. She blushed and bowed
her luxuriant tresses into close contact with those supplied me
temporarily by Grandjean. I know not how the entanglement took place
but so it was. I arose with a shining pate, wigless; she in disdain
and wrath, half-buried in alien hair. Thus ended my hopes of the widow
by an accident which could not have been anticipated, to be sure, but
which the natural sequence of events had brought about.

Without despairing, however, I undertook the siege of a less
implacable heart. The fates were again propitious for a brief period,
but again a trivial incident interfered. Meeting my betrothed in an
avenue thronged with the elite of the city, I was hastening to greet
her with one of my best considered bows, when a small particle of some
foreign matter lodging in the corner of my eye rendered me for the
moment completely blind. Before I could recover my sight, the lady of
my love had disappeared–irreparably affronted at what she chose to
consider my premeditated rudeness in passing her by ungreeted. While I
stood bewildered at the suddenness of this accident (which might have
happened, nevertheless, to any one under the sun), and while I still
continued incapable of sight, I was accosted by the Angel of the Odd,
who proffered me his aid with a civility which I had no reason to
expect. He examined my disordered eye with much gentleness and skill,
informed me that I had a drop in it, and (whatever a “drop” was) took
it out, and afforded me relief.

I now considered it high time to die (since fortune had so determined
to persecute me), and accordingly made my way to the nearest river.
Here, divesting myself of my clothes (for there is no reason why we
cannot die as we were born), I threw myself headlong into the current;
the sole witness of my fate being a solitary crow that had been
seduced into the eating of brandy-saturated corn, and so had staggered
away from his fellows. No sooner had I entered the water than this
bird took it into his head to fly away with the most indispensable
portion of my apparel. Postponing, therefore, for the present, my
suicidal design, I just slipped my nether extremities into the sleeves
of my coat, and betook myself to a pursuit of the felon with all the
nimbleness which the case required and its circumstances would admit.
But my evil destiny attended me still. As I ran at full speed, with my
nose up in the atmosphere, and intent only upon the purloiner of my
property, I suddenly perceived that my feet rested no longer upon
terra firma; the fact is, I had thrown myself over a precipice, and
should inevitably have been dashed to pieces but for my good fortune
in grasping the end of a long guide-rope, which depended from a
passing balloon.

As soon as I sufficiently recovered my senses to comprehend the
terrific predicament in which I stood, or rather hung, I exerted all
the power of my lungs to make that predicament known to the aeronaut
overhead. But for a long time I exerted myself in vain. Either the
fool could not, or the villain would not perceive me. Meanwhile the
machine rapidly soared, while my strength even more rapidly failed. I
was soon upon the point of resigning myself to my fate, and dropping
quietly into the sea, when my spirits were suddenly revived by hearing
a hollow voice from above, which seemed to be lazily humming an opera
air. Looking up, I perceived the Angel of the Odd. He was leaning,
with his arms folded, over the rim of the car; and with a pipe in his
mouth, at which he puffed leisurely, seemed to be upon excellent terms
with himself and the universe. I was too much exhausted to speak, so I
merely regarded him with an imploring air.

For several minutes, although he looked me full in the face, he said
nothing. At length, removing carefully his meerschaum from the right
to the left corner of his mouth, he condescended to speak.

“Who pe you,” he asked, “und what der teuffel you pe do dare?”

To this piece of impudence, cruelty, and affectation, I could reply
only by ejaculating the monosyllable “Help!”

“Elp!” echoed the ruffian, “not I. Dare iz te pottle–elp yourself,
und pe tam’d!”

With these words he let fall a heavy bottle of Kirschenwaesser, which,
dropping precisely upon the crown of my head, caused me to imagine
that my brains were entirely knocked out. Impressed with this idea I
was about to relinquish my hold and give up the ghost with a good
grace, when I was arrested by the cry of the Angel, who bade me hold
on.

“‘Old on!” he said: “don’t pe in te ‘urry–don’t. Will you pe take de
odder pottle, or ‘ave you pe got zober yet, and come to your zenzes?”

I made haste, hereupon, to nod my head twice–once in the negative,
meaning thereby that I would prefer not taking the other bottle at
present; and once in the affirmative, intending thus to imply that I
was sober and had positively come to my senses. By these means I
somewhat softened the Angel.

“Und you pelief, ten,” he inquired, “at te last? You pelief, ten, in
te possibility of te odd?”

I again nodded my head in assent.

“Und you ave pelief in me, te Angel of te Odd?”

I nodded again.

“Und you acknowledge tat you pe te blind dronk und te vool?”

I nodded once more.

“Put your right hand into your left preeches pocket, ten, in token ov
your vull zubmizzion unto te Angel ov te Odd.”

This thing, for very obvious reasons, I found it quite impossible to
do. In the first place, my left arm had been broken in my fall from
the ladder, and therefore, had I let go my hold with the right hand I
must have let go altogether. In the second place, I could have no
breeches until I came across the crow. I was therefore obliged, much
to my regret, to shake my head in the negative, intending thus to give
the Angel to understand that I found it inconvenient, just at that
moment, to comply with his very reasonable demand! No sooner, however,
had I ceased shaking my head than–

“Go to der teuffel, ten!” roared the Angel of the Odd.

In pronouncing these words he drew a sharp knife across the guide-rope
by which I was suspended, and as we then happened to be precisely over
my own house (which, during my peregrinations, had been handsomely
rebuilt), it so occurred that I tumbled headlong down the ample
chimney and alit upon the dining-room hearth.

Upon coming to my senses (for the fall had very thoroughly stunned me)
I found it about four o’clock in the morning. I lay outstretched where
I had fallen from the balloon. My head groveled in the ashes of an
extinguished fire, while my feet reposed upon the wreck of a small
table, overthrown, and amid the fragments of a miscellaneous dessert,
intermingled with a newspaper, some broken glasses and shattered
bottles, and an empty jug of the Schiedam Kirschenwaesser. Thus
revenged himself the Angel of the Odd.

Stay for me there ! I will not fail.
To meet thee in that hollow vale.

[ Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of
Chichester .]

ILL-FATED and mysterious man ! – bewildered in the brilliancy of
thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth !
Again in fancy I behold thee ! Once more thy form hath risen before
me ! – not – oh not as thou art – in the cold valley and shadow -
but as thou shouldst be – squandering away a life of magnificent
meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venice – which is a
star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose
Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter meaning upon the
secrets of her silent waters. Yes ! I repeat it – as thou shouldst
be . There are surely other worlds than this – other thoughts than
the thoughts of the multitude – other speculations than the
speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into
question ? who blame thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce
those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the
overflowings of thine everlasting energies ?

It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the
Ponte di Sospiri , that I met for the third or fourth time the
person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I
bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I remember – ah
! how should I forget ? – the deep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs,
the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and
down the narrow canal.

It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza
had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the
Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal
Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta,
by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the
mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke
suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hysterical, and long continued
shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet : while the
gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy
darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently left
to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into
the smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we
were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a
thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases
of the Ducal Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid
and preternatural day.

A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from
an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal.
The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim ; and,
although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout
swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the surface,
the treasure which was to be found, alas ! only within the abyss.
Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the entrance of the palace,
and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who then
saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphrodite -
the adoration of all Venice – the gayest of the gay – the most lovely
where all were beautiful – but still the young wife of the old and
intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and
only one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in
bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its
little life in struggles to call upon her name.

She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the
black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than
half loosened for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid
a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls
like those of the young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like
drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to her delicate form ;
but the mid-summer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and
no motion in the statue-like form itself, stirred even the folds of
that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the heavy marble
hangs around the Niobe. Yet – strange to say ! – her large lustrous
eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest
hope lay buried – but riveted in a widely different direction ! The
prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in
all Venice – but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when
beneath her lay stifling her only child ? Yon dark, gloomy niche,
too, yawns right opposite her chamber window – what, then, could
there be in its shadows – in its architecture – in its ivy-wreathed
and solemn cornices – that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered
at a thousand times before ? Nonsense ! – Who does not remember
that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror,
multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far-off
places, the wo which is close at hand ?

Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the
water-gate, stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni
himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and
seemed ennuye to the very death, as at intervals he gave directions
for the recovery of his child. Stupified and aghast, I had myself no
power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first
hearing the shriek, and must have presented to the eyes of the
agitated group a spectral and ominous appearance, as with pale
countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down among them in that
funereal gondola.

All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the
search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy
sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child ; (how much less
than for the mother ! ) but now, from the interior of that dark
niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old
Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a
figure muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach of the light,
and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged
headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with
the still living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the
marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with
the drenching water, became unfastened, and, falling in folds about
his feet, discovered to the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful
person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater
part of Europe was then ringing.

No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa ! She will now
receive her child – she will press it to her heart – she will cling
to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas !
another’s arms have taken it from the stranger – another’s arms
have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace
! And the Marchesa ! Her lip – her beautiful lip trembles : tears
are gathering in her eyes – those eyes which, like Pliny’s acanthus,
are “soft and almost liquid.” Yes ! tears are gathering in those
eyes – and see ! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and
the statue has started into life ! The pallor of the marble
countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the
marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a tide of
ungovernable crimson ; and a slight shudder quivers about her
delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich silver
lilies in the grass.

Why should that lady blush ! To this demand there is no answer
- except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of a
mother’s heart, the privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected
to enthral her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to
throw over her Venetian shoulders that drapery which is their due.
What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing
? – for the glance of those wild appealing eyes ? for the unusual
tumult of that throbbing bosom ? – for the convulsive pressure of
that trembling hand ? – that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into
the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason
could there have been for the low – the singularly low tone of those
unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu
? “Thou hast conquered,” she said, or the murmurs of the water
deceived me ; “thou hast conquered – one hour after sunrise – we
shall meet – so let it be !”

*     *      *     *     *      *     *

The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the
palace, and the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon the
flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced
around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him
the service of my own ; and he accepted the civility. Having
obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together to his
residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession, and spoke
of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great apparent
cordiality.

There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being
minute. The person of the stranger – let me call him by this title,
who to all the world was still a stranger – the person of the
stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been
below rather than above the medium size : although there were
moments of intense passion when his frame actually expanded and
belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his
figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the
Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been
known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous
emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity – singular, wild,
full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to intense
and brilliant jet – and a profusion of curling, black hair, from
which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at intervals all
light and ivory – his were features than which I have seen none more
classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor
Commodus. Yet his countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which
all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never
afterwards seen again. It had no peculiar – it had no settled
predominant expression to be fastened upon the memory ; a
countenance seen and instantly forgotten – but forgotten with a vague
and never-ceasing desire of recalling it to mind. Not that the
spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own
distinct image upon the mirror of that face – but that the mirror,
mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion had
departed.

Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me,
in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the
next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly at
his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic
pomp, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity
of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics,
into an apartment whose unparalleled splendor burst through the
opening door with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with
luxuriousness.

I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his
possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of
ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring
myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have
supplied the princely magnificence which burned and blazed around.

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still
brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well as
from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he
had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding night. In
the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the evident
design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been
paid to the decora of what is technically called keeping, or to
the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from object to
object, and rested upon none – neither the grotesques of the Greek
painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge
carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the
room trembled to the vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin
was not to be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and
conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers,
together with multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald
and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the
whole, through windows, formed each of a single pane of
crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand
reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like
cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at
length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in
subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of Chili
gold.

“Ha ! ha ! ha ! – ha ! ha ! ha ! ” – laughed the proprietor,
motioning me to a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself
back at full-length upon an ottoman. “I see,” said he, perceiving
that I could not immediately reconcile myself to the bienseance of
so singular a welcome – “I see you are astonished at my apartment -
at my statues – my pictures – my originality of conception in
architecture and upholstery ! absolutely drunk, eh, with my
magnificence ? But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice
dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my
uncharitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished.
Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous, that a man must
laugh or die. To die laughing, must be the most glorious of all
glorious deaths ! Sir Thomas More – a very fine man was Sir Thomas
More – Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the
Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters
who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however,”
continued he musingly, “that at Sparta (which is now Pal ; ochori,)
at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of
scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon which are still
legible the letters 7!=9 . They are undoubtedly part of ‘+7!=9! .
Now, at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thousand
different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of
Laughter should have survived all the others ! But in the present
instance,” he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and
manner, “I have no right to be merry at your expense. You might well
have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my
little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the
same order – mere ultras of fashionable insipidity. This is better
than fashion – is it not ? Yet this has but to be seen to become the
rage – that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their
entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such
profanation. With one exception, you are the only human being besides
myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of
these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizzened as you see
!”

I bowed in acknowledgment – for the overpowering sense of splendor
and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of
his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my
appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.

“Here,” he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered
around the apartment, “here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue,
and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see,
with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all,
however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here, too, are
some chefs d’oeuvre of the unknown great ; and here, unfinished
designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose very names the
perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What
think you,” said he, turning abruptly as he spoke – “what think you
of this Madonna della Pieta ?”

“It is Guido’s own ! ” I said, with all the enthusiasm of my
nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing
loveliness. “It is Guido’s own ! – how could you have obtained it
? – she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in sculpture.”

“Ha ! ” said he thoughtfully, “the Venus – the beautiful Venus ?
- the Venus of the Medici ? – she of the diminutive head and the
gilded hair ? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to
be heard with difficulty,) and all the right, are restorations ; and
in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence of
all affectation. Give me the Canova ! The Apollo, too, is a copy
- there can be no doubt of it – blind fool that I am, who cannot
behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo ! I cannot help – pity
me ! – I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates
who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of marble ?
Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet -

     'Non ha l'ottimo artista alcun concetto
     Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.' "

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the
true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing
of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in
what such difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied
in its full force to the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt
it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his
moral temperament and character. Nor can I better define that
peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart
from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense
and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions -
intruding upon his moments of dalliance – and interweaving itself
with his very flashes of merriment – like adders which writhe from
out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples
of Persepolis.

I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the
mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted
upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidation – a
degree of nervous unction in action and in speech – an unquiet
excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times
unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm.
Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence whose
commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening
in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a
visiter, or to sounds which must have had existence in his
imagination alone.

It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent
abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar
Politian’s beautiful tragedy “The Orfeo,” (the first native Italian
tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered a passage
underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third
act – a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement – a passage
which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a
thrill of novel emotion – no woman without a sigh. The whole page
was blotted with fresh tears ; and, upon the opposite interleaf,
were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different
from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some
difficulty in recognising it as his own : -

     Thou wast that all to me, love,
        For which my soul did pine -
     A green isle in the sea, love,
        A fountain and a shrine,
     All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers ;
        And all the flowers were mine.
     Ah, dream too bright to last !
        Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
     But to be overcast !
        A voice from out the Future cries,
     "Onward !  " - but o'er the Past
        (Dim gulf !  ) my spirit hovering lies,
     Mute - motionless - aghast !
     For alas !  alas !  with me
        The light of life is o'er.
     "No more - no more - no more,"
     (Such language holds the solemn sea
        To the sands upon the shore,)
     Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
        Or the stricken eagle soar !
     Now all my hours are trances ;
        And all my nightly dreams
     Are where the dark eye glances,
        And where thy footstep gleams,
     In what ethereal dances,
        By what Italian streams.
     Alas !  for that accursed time
        They bore thee o'er the billow,
     From Love to titled age and crime,
        And an unholy pillow !  -
     From me, and from our misty clime,
        Where weeps the silver willow  !

That these lines were written in English – a language with which I
had not believed their author acquainted – afforded me little matter
for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his
acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them
from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery ; but
the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement.
It had been originally written London , and afterwards carefully
overscored – not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word from
a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned me no little amazement ;
for I well remember that, in a former conversation with a friend, I
particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the
Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for some years previous to her marriage had
resided in that city,) when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to
understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain.
I might as well here mention, that I have more than once heard,
(without, of course, giving credit to a report involving so many
improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak, was not only by
birth, but in education, an Englishman .

*      *       *      *       *      *       *      *       *

“There is one painting,” said he, without being aware of my notice
of the tragedy – “there is still one painting which you have not
seen.” And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length
portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.

Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her
superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me
the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before
me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was
beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible
anomaly !) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found
inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay
folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a
curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible,
barely touched the earth ; and, scarcely discernible in the
brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her
loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My
glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the
vigorous words of Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois , quivered instinctively
upon my lips :

                        "He is up
     There like a Roman statue !  He will stand
     Till Death hath made him marble !"

“Come,” he said at length, turning towards a table of richly
enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets
fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases,
fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the foreground
of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be
Johannisberger. “Come,” he said, abruptly, “let us drink ! It is
early – but let us drink. It is indeed early,” he continued,
musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment
ring with the first hour after sunrise : “It is indeed early – but
what matters it ? let us drink ! Let us pour out an offering to yon
solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue
!” And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid
succession several goblets of the wine.

“To dream,” he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the
magnificent vases – “to dream has been the business of my life. I
have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In
the heart of Venice could I have erected a better ? You behold
around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The
chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian devices, and the
sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the
effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and
especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind from the
contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist ; but
that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now
the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit
is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me
for the wilder visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now
rapidly departing.” He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his
bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At
length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the
lines of the Bishop of Chichester :

     "Stay for me there !  I will not fail
     To meet thee in that hollow vale." 

In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw
himself at full-length upon an ottoman.

A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at
the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second
disturbance, when a page of Mentoni’s household burst into the room,
and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent
words, “My mistress ! – my mistress ! – Poisoned ! – poisoned !
Oh, beautiful – oh, beautiful Aphrodite !”

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the
sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were
rigid – his lips were livid – his lately beaming eyes were riveted in
death. I staggered back towards the table – my hand fell upon a
cracked and blackened goblet – and a consciousness of the entire and
terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.

Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas
aliquantulum forelevatas.

- Ebn Zaiat .

MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.
Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various
as the hues of that arch – as distinct too, yet as intimately
blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that
from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? – from the
covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a
consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either
the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies
which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have
been .

My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not
mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than
my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of
visionaries; and in many striking particulars – in the character of
the family mansion – in the frescos of the chief saloon – in the
tapestries of the dormitories – in the chiselling of some buttresses
in the armory – but more especially in the gallery of antique
paintings – in the fashion of the library chamber – and, lastly, in
the very peculiar nature of the library’s contents – there is more
than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.

The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that
chamber, and with its volumes – of which latter I will say no more.
Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to
say that I had not lived before – that the soul has no previous
existence. You deny it? – let us not argue the matter. Convinced
myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of
aerial forms – of spiritual and meaning eyes – of sounds, musical yet
sad – a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a
shadow – vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow,
too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight
of my reason shall exist.

In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of
what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of
fairy land – into a palace of imagination – into the wild dominions
of monastic thought and erudition – it is not singular that I gazed
around me with a startled and ardent eye – that I loitered away my
boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is
singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me
still in the mansion of my fathers – it is wonderful what
stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life – wonderful how
total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest
thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as
visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in
turn, not the material of my every-day existence, but in very deed
that existence utterly and solely in itself.

*         *         *         *         *        *        *

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my
paternal halls. Yet differently we grew – I, ill of health, and
buried in gloom – she, agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy;
hers, the ramble on the hill-side – mine the studies of the cloister;
I, living within my own heart, and addicted, body and soul, to the
most intense and painful meditation – she, roaming carelessly through
life, with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent
flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name -
Berenice! – and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous
recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image
before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy!
Oh, gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the shrubberies of
Arnheim! Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then – then all is
mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease – a
fatal disease, fell like the simoon upon her frame; and, even while I
gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her
mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle
and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the
destroyer came and went! – and the victim -where is she? I knew her
not – or knew her no longer as Berenice.

Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal
and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in
the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the
most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy
not unfrequently terminating in trance itself – trance very nearly
resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of
recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time
my own disease – for I have been told that I should call it by no
other appellation – my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and
assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary
form – hourly and momently gaining vigor – and at length obtaining
over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I
must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those
properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the
attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I
fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind
of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous
intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of
meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves,
in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the
universe.

To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to
some frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book;
to become absorbed, for the better part of a summer’s day, in a
quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to
lose myself, for an entire night, in watching the steady flame of a
lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the
perfume of a flower; to repeat, monotonously, some common word, until
the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea
whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical
existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and
obstinately persevered in: such were a few of the most common and
least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental
faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly
bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.

Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid
attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must
not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common
to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent
imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an
extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily
and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the
dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not
frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness
of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the
conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury , he finds the
incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and
forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous ,
although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a
refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made;
and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as
a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the
termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of
sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which
was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of
mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said
before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the
speculative.

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to
irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in
their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic
qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the
treatise of the noble Italian, Coelius Secundus Curio, ” De
Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei; ” St. Austin’s great work, the “City of
God;” and Tertullian’s “De Carne Christi ,” in which the paradoxical
sentence ” Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et
sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est, ” occupied my
undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless
investigation.

Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial
things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by
Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human
violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled
only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a
careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the
alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition
of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that
intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some
trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In
the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me
pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and
gentle life, I did not fall to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon
the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so
suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the
idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred,
under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to
its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but
more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -
in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal
identity.

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely
I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence,
feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions
always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning -
among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday – and in the
silence of my library at night – she had flitted by my eyes, and I
had seen her – not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the
Berenice of a dream; not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the
abstraction of such a being; not as a thing to admire, but to
analyze; not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most
abstruse although desultory speculation. And now – now I shuddered
in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly
lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that
she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of
marriage.

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when,
upon an afternoon in the winter of the year – one of those
unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the
beautiful Halcyon , – I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in
the inner apartment of the library. But, uplifting my eyes, I saw
that Berenice stood before me.

Was it my own excited imagination – or the misty influence of the
atmosphere – or the uncertain twilight of the chamber – or the gray
draperies which fell around her figure – that caused in it so
vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no
word; and I – not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy
chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed
me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the
chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my
eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and
not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the
contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and
the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the
hollow temples with innumerable ringlets, now of a vivid yellow, and
jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning
melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and
lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from
their glassy stare to he contemplation of the thin and shrunken
lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of
the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to
God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had
died!

*         *         *         *         *        *        *

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found
that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered
chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven
away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on
their surface – not a shade on their enamel – not an indenture in
their edges – but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand
in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I
beheld them then. The teeth! – the teeth! – they were here, and
there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long,
narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about
them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then
came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against
its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of
the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I
longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different
interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They – they
alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole
individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in
every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their
characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon
their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I
shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and
sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of
moral expression. Of Mademoiselle Salle it has been well said, ” Que
tous ses pas etaient des sentiments ,” and of Berenice I more
seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees . Des
idees! – ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des
idees! – ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt
that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving
me back to reason.

And the evening closed in upon me thus – and then the darkness
came, and tarried, and went – and the day again dawned – and the
mists of a second night were now gathering around – and still I sat
motionless in that solitary room – and still I sat buried in
meditation – and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its
terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it
floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At
length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay;
and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices,
intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose
from my seat, and throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw
standing out in the ante-chamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who
told me that Berenice was – no more! She had been seized with
epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the
night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations
for the burial were completed.

*         *         *         *         *        *        *

I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there
alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and
exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well
aware, that since the setting of the sun, Berenice had been interred.
But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive, at
least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with
horror – horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more
terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my
existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible
recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever
and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and
piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I
had done a deed – what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and
the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, – ” what was it? “

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little
box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently
before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came
it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it?
These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at
length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence
underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of
the poet Ebn Zaiat: – ” Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae
visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas .” Why then, as I
perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and
the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?

There came a light tap at the library door – and, pale as the
tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild
with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very
low. What said he? – some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild
cry disturbing the silence of the night – of the gathering together
of the household – of a search in the direction of the sound; and
then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a
violated grave – of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing
- still palpitating – still alive !

He pointed to garments; – they were muddy and clotted with gore.
I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand: it was indented with
the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object
against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes: it was a spade.
With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay
upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor, it slipped
from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it,
with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental
surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking
substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to
pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to
expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
Yet, mad am I not – and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I
die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to
place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a
series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events
have terrified – have tortured – have destroyed me. Yet I will not
attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror
- to many they will seem less terrible than barroques. Hereafter,
perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to
the common-place – some intellect more calm, more logical, and far
less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances
I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very
natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to
make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals,
and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With
these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding
and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my
growth, and in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal
sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a
faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of
explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing
love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had
frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity
of mere Man .

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition
not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic
pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most
agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small
monkey, and a cat .

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely
black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion,
which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she
was ever serious upon this point – and I mention the matter at all
for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be
remembered.

Pluto – this was the cat’s name – was my favorite pet and
playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about
the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from
following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during
which my general temperament and character – through the
instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance – had (I blush to confess
it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by
day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of
others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At
length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course,
were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected,
but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient
regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of
maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by
accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease
grew upon me – for what disease is like Alcohol! – and at length even
Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish -
even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my
haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I
seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight
wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly
possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at
once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish
malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took
from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor
beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable
atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning – when I had slept off the
fumes of the night’s debauch – I experienced a sentiment half of
horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty;
but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul
remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in
wine all memory of the deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost
eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer
appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but,
as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so
much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident
dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But
this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to
my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of
this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that
my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive
impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of
Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or
a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should
not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is Law , merely because we
understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to
my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to
vex itself – to offer violence to its own nature – to do wrong for
the wrong’s sake only – that urged me to continue and finally to
consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One
morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it
to the limb of a tree; – hung it with the tears streaming from my
eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; – hung it because
I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no
reason of offence; – hung it because I knew that in so doing I was
committing a sin – a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal
soul as to place it – if such a thing wore possible – even beyond the
reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible
God.

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was
aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in
flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty
that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the
conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth
was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of
cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am
detailing a chain of facts – and wish not to leave even a possible
link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins.
The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was
found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the
middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed.
The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the
fire – a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread.
About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed
to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager
attention. The words “strange!” “singular!” and other similar
expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven
in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic
cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous.
There was a rope about the animal’s neck.

When I first beheld this apparition – for I could scarcely regard
it as less – my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length
reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a
garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had
been immediately filled by the crowd – by some one of whom the animal
must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window,
into my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of
arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the
victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread
plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from
the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.

Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether
to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not
the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I
could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this
period, there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed,
but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the
animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I now
habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of
somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half stupified, in a den of more than infamy,
my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon
the head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which
constituted the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking
steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now
caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the
object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It
was a black cat – a very large one – fully as large as Pluto, and
closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a
white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,
although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole
region of the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose,
purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my
notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I
at once offered to purchase it of the landlord; but this person made
no claim to it – knew nothing of it – had never seen it before.

I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the
animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do
so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it
reached the house it domesticated itself at once, and became
immediately a great favorite with my wife.

For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me.
This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but – I know not
how or why it was – its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted
and annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance
rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain
sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,
preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks,
strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but gradually – very
gradually – I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to
flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
pestilence.

What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery,
on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had
been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only
endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a
high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once been my
distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and
purest pleasures.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself
seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which
it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat,
it would crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering
me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get
between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long
and sharp claws in my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast.
At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet
withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but
chiefly – let me confess it at once – by absolute dread of the beast.

This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil – and yet I
should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed
to own – yes, even in this felon’s cell, I am almost ashamed to own -
that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had
been heightened by one of the merest chimaeras it would be possible
to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once, to the
character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and
which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange
beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this
mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by
slow degrees – degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long
time my Reason struggled to reject as fanciful – it had, at length,
assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the
representation of an object that I shudder to name – and for this,
above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the
monster had I dared – it was now, I say, the image of a hideous -
of a ghastly thing – of the GALLOWS ! – oh, mournful and terrible
engine of Horror and of Crime – of Agony and of Death !

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere
Humanity. And a brute beast – whose fellow I had contemptuously
destroyed – a brute beast to work out for me – for me a man,
fashioned in the image of the High God – so much of insufferable wo!
Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any
more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in
the latter, I started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to
find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight
- an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off -
incumbent eternally upon my heart !

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble
remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates – the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of
my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind;
while, from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a
fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife,
alas! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers.

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the
cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit.
The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me
headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and
forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed
my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have
proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow
was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference,
into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp
and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without
a groan.

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and
with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew
that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night,
without the risk of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects
entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into
minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved
to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I
deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard – about packing
it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so
getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined
to wall it up in the cellar – as the monks of the middle ages are
recorded to have walled up their victims.

For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls
were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout
with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had
prevented from hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a
projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been
filled up, and made to resemble the red of the cellar. I made no
doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert
the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could
detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not
deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and,
having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped
it in that position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole
structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and
hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which
could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very
carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt
satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest
appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was
picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and
said to myself – “Here at least, then, my labor has not been in
vain.”

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause
of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put
it to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there
could have been no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty
animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and
forebore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to
describe, or to imagine, the deep, the blissful sense of relief which
the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did
not make its appearance during the night – and thus for one night at
least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and
tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my
soul!

The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came
not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had
fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness
was supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some
few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily answered.
Even a search had been instituted – but of course nothing was to be
discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured.

Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police
came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make
rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the
inscrutability of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment
whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their search. They
left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth
time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My
heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked
the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and
roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and
prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be
restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and
to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.

“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, “I
delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a
little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this – this is a very
well constructed house.” [In the rabid desire to say something
easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] – “I may say an
excellently well constructed house. These walls are you going,
gentlemen? – these walls are solidly put together;” and here, through
the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I
held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work behind
which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the
Arch-Fiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into
silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! – by a
cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and
then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream,
utterly anomalous and inhuman – a howl – a wailing shriek, half of
horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of
hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and of
the demons that exult in the damnation.

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to
the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained
motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a
dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The
corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect
before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended
mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had
seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to
the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

That Pierre Bon-Bon was a restaurateur of uncommon qualifications,
no man who, during the reign of —, frequented the little Cf in the
cul-de-sac Le Febvre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at liberty to
dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree, skilled in the
philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more especially undeniable.
His pats la fois were beyond doubt immaculate; but what pen can do
justice to his essays sur la Nature – his thoughts sur l’Ame – his
observations sur l’Esprit ? If his omelettes – if his fricandeaux
were inestimable, what littrateur of that day would not have given
twice as much for an ” Ide de Bon-Bon ” as for all the trash of ” Ides ”
of all the rest of the savants ? Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which
no other man had ransacked – had more than any other would have
entertained a notion of reading- had understood more than any other would
have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while he
flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert “that
his dicta evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the depth of
the Lyceum” – although, mark me, his doctrines were by no means very
generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were difficult
of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their self-evidency that
many persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is to Bon-Bon – but
let this go no farther – it is to Bon-Bon that Kant himself is mainly
indebted for his metaphysics. The former was indeed not a Platonist, nor
strictly speaking an Aristotelian – nor did he, like the modern Leibnitz,
waste those precious hours which might be employed in the invention of a
fricase or, facili gradu , the analysis of a sensation, in frivolous
attempts at reconciling the obstinate oils and waters of ethical
discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was Ionic – Bon-Bon was equally Italic. He
reasoned priori – He reasoned also posteriori . His ideas were
innate – or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizonde – He believed
in Bossarion [Bessarion]. Bon-Bon was emphatically a – Bon-Bonist.

I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of restaurateur. I
would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in fulfilling
his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a proper estimation of
their dignity and importance. Far from it. It was impossible to say in
which branch of his profession he took the greater pride. In his opinion
the powers of the intellect held intimate connection with the capabilities
of the stomach. I am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the
Chinese, who held that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all
events were right, he thought, who employed the same words for the mind
and the diaphragm. {*1) By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of
gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the
metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings – and what great man has
not a thousand? – if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they were
failings of very little importance – faults indeed which, in other
tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues. As
regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it in this
history but for the remarkable prominency – the extreme alto relievo -
in which it jutted out from the plane of his general disposition. He could
never let slip an opportunity of making a bargain.

{*1} MD,<,l

Not that he was avaricious – no. It was by no means necessary to the
satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own
proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected – a trade of any
kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances – a triumphant smile was
seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a knowing
wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.

At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humor so peculiar as
the one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark. At the
epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity not attracted observation,
there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon reported that,
upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon was wont to differ
widely from the downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes,
or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature;
stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at
leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague
longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil
for wise purposes of his own.

The philosopher had other weaknesses – but they are scarcely worthy
our serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary
profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle. Whether
this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid proof of such
profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far as I can learn, did
not think the subject adapted to minute investigation; – nor do I. Yet in
the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical, it is not to be
supposed that the restaurateur would lose sight of that intuitive
discrimination which was wont to characterize, at one and the same time,
his essais and his omelettes. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had
its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du
Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would
sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over
Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had
it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the
peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded – but this was by no
means the case. Indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind in the
philosophic Bon-Bon did begin at length to assume a character of strange
intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with the diablerie
of his favorite German studies.

To enter the little Cafe in the cul-de-sac Le Febvre was, at the
period of our tale, to enter the sanctum of a man of genius. Bon-Bon was a
man of genius. There was not a sous-cusinier in Rouen, who could not have
told you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat knew it, and
forebore to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of genius. His large
water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his
master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a
debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether
unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true that much of this habitual respect
might have been attributed to the personal appearance of the
metaphysician. A distinguished exterior will, I am constrained to say,
have its way even with a beast; and I am willing to allow much in the
outward man of the restaurateur calculated to impress the imagination of
the quadruped. There is a peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the
little great – if I may be permitted so equivocal an expression – which
mere physical bulk alone will be found at all times inefficient in
creating. If, however, Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his
head was diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the
rotundity of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering
upon the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of
his acquirements – in its immensity a fitting habitation for his immortal
soul.

I might here – if it so pleased me – dilate upon the matter of
habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external metaphysician. I
might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over
his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and
tassels – that his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those
worn by the common class of restaurateurs at that day- that the sleeves
were something fuller than the reigning costume permitted – that the cuffs
were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with cloth of the
same quality and color as the garment, but faced in a more fanciful manner
with the particolored velvet of Genoa – that his slippers were of a bright
purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been manufactured in Japan,
but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the brilliant tints of the
binding and embroidery – that his breeches were of the yellow satin-like
material called aimable – that his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form a
dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all over with crimson devices,
floated cavalierly upon his shoulders like a mist of the morning – and
that his tout ensemble gave rise to the remarkable words of Benevenuta,
the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it was difficult to say whether
Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise, or rather a very Paradise of
perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon all these points if I pleased,
- but I forbear, merely personal details may be left to historical
novelists,- they are beneath the moral dignity of matter-of-fact.

I have said that “to enter the Cafe in the cul-de-sac Le Febvre was to
enter the sanctum of a man of genius” – but then it was only the man of
genius who could duly estimate the merits of the sanctum. A sign,
consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one side of the
volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a pate. On the back were
visible in large letters Oeuvres de Bon-Bon. Thus was delicately shadowed
forth the two-fold occupation of the proprietor.

Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building
presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique
construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the Cafe. In a
corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An army of
curtains, together with a canopy a la Grecque, gave it an air at once
classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonary opposite, appeared, in
direct family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the
bibliotheque. A dish of polemics stood peacefully upon the dresser. Here
lay an ovenful of the latest ethics – there a kettle of dudecimo melanges.
Volumes of German morality were hand and glove with the gridiron – a
toasting-fork might be discovered by the side of Eusebius – Plato reclined
at his ease in the frying-pan- and contemporary manuscripts were filed
away upon the spit.

In other respects the Cafe de Bon-Bon might be said to differ little
from the usual restaurants of the period. A fireplace yawned opposite the
door. On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard displayed a
formidable array of labelled bottles.

It was here, about twelve o’clock one night during the severe winter
the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity – that Pierre
Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked the door
upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific mood to the
comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of blazing fagots.

It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or
twice during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to its
centre with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies in the
wall, and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully the curtains
of the philosopher’s bed, and disorganized the economy of his pate-pans
and papers. The huge folio sign that swung without, exposed to the fury of
the tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a moaning sound from its
stanchions of solid oak.

It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his
chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a
perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity of
his meditations. In attempting des oeufs a la Princesse, he had
unfortunately perpetrated an omelette a la Reine; the discovery of a
principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew; and
last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable bargains
which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing to a
successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these
unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some degree
of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is so well
calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate vicinity the large
black water-dog we have spoken of before, and settling himself uneasily in
his chair, he could not help casting a wary and unquiet eye toward those
distant recesses of the apartment whose inexorable shadows not even the
red firelight itself could more than partially succeed in overcoming.
Having completed a scrutiny whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible
to himself, he drew close to his seat a small table covered with books and
papers, and soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous
manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.

He had been thus occupied for some minutes when “I am in no hurry,
Monsieur Bon-Bon,” suddenly whispered a whining voice in the apartment.

“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning
the table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.

“Very true,” calmly replied the voice.

“Very true! – what is very true? – how came you here?” vociferated the
metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at full
length upon the bed.

“I was saying,” said the intruder, without attending to the
interrogatives, – “I was saying that I am not at all pushed for time -
that the business upon which I took the liberty of calling, is of no
pressing importance – in short, that I can very well wait until you have
finished your Exposition.”

“My Exposition! – there now! – how do you know? – how came you to
understand that I was writing an Exposition? – good God!”

“Hush!” replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising
quickly from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an iron
lamp that depended over-head swung convulsively back from his approach.

The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the
stranger’s dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure, exceedingly
lean, but much above the common height, were rendered minutely distinct,
by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted tight to the skin,
but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a century ago. These
garments had evidently been intended for a much shorter person than their
present owner. His ankles and wrists were left naked for several inches.
In his shoes, however, a pair of very brilliant buckles gave the lie to
the extreme poverty implied by the other portions of his dress. His head
was bare, and entirely bald, with the exception of a hinder part, from
which depended a queue of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles,
with side glasses, protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and
at the same time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their color
or their conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a
shirt, but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme
precision around the throat and the ends hanging down formally side by
side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an
ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and
demeanor might have very well sustained a conception of that nature. Over
his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an
instrument resembling the stylus of the ancients. In a breast-pocket of
his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with clasps
of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned outwardly
from the person as to discover the words “Rituel Catholique” in white
letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnine
- even cadaverously pale. The forehead was lofty, and deeply furrowed with
the ridges of contemplation. The corners of the mouth were drawn down into
an expression of the most submissive humility. There was also a clasping
of the hands, as he stepped toward our hero – a deep sigh – and altogether
a look of such utter sanctity as could not have failed to be unequivocally
preposessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the countenance of the
metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory survey of his visiter’s
person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and conducted him to a seat.

There would however be a radical error in attributing this
instantaneous transition of feeling in the philosopher, to any one of
those causes which might naturally be supposed to have had an influence.
Indeed, Pierre Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to understand of his
disposition, was of all men the least likely to be imposed upon by any
speciousness of exterior deportment. It was impossible that so accurate an
observer of men and things should have failed to discover, upon the
moment, the real character of the personage who had thus intruded upon his
hospitality. To say no more, the conformation of his visiter’s feet was
sufficiently remarkable – he maintained lightly upon his head an
inordinately tall hat – there was a tremulous swelling about the hinder
part of his breeches – and the vibration of his coat tail was a palpable
fact. Judge, then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found
himself thrown thus at once into the society of a person for whom he had
at all times entertained the most unqualified respect. He was, however,
too much of the diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his
suspicions in regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to
appear at all conscious of the high honor he thus unexpectedly enjoyed;
but, by leading his guest into the conversation, to elicit some important
ethical ideas, which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated
publication, enlighten the human race, and at the same time immortalize
himself – ideas which, I should have added, his visitor’s great age, and
well-known proficiency in the science of morals, might very well have
enabled him to afford.

Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit
down, while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the fire,
and place upon the now re-established table some bottles of Mousseux.
Having quickly completed these operations, he drew his chair vis-a-vis to
his companion’s, and waited until the latter should open the conversation.
But plans even the most skilfully matured are often thwarted in the outset
of their application – and the restaurateur found himself nonplussed by
the very first words of his visiter’s speech.

“I see you know me, Bon-Bon,” said he; “ha! ha! ha! – he! he! he! -
hi! hi! hi! – ho! ho! ho! – hu! hu! hu!” – and the devil, dropping at once
the sanctity of his demeanor, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from
ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and,
throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and uproariously,
while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches, joined lustily in
the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off at a tangent, stood up on end,
and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.

Not so the philosopher; he was too much a man of the world either to
laugh like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation of
the cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see the
white letters which formed the words “Rituel Catholique” on the book in
his guest’s pocket, momently changing both their color and their import,
and in a few seconds, in place of the original title the words Regitre des
Condamnes blazed forth in characters of red. This startling circumstance,
when Bon-Bon replied to his visiter’s remark, imparted to his manner an
air of embarrassment which probably might, not otherwise have been
observed.

“Why sir,” said the philosopher, “why sir, to speak sincerely – I I
imagine – I have some faint – some very faint idea – of the remarkable
honor-”

“Oh! – ah! – yes! – very well!” interrupted his Majesty; “say no more
- I see how it is.” And hereupon, taking off his green spectacles, he
wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat, and deposited
them in his pocket.

If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his
amazement was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented
itself to view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to
ascertain the color of his guest’s, he found them by no means black, as he
had anticipated – nor gray, as might have been imagined – nor yet hazel
nor blue – nor indeed yellow nor red – nor purple – nor white – nor green
- nor any other color in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in
the waters under the earth. In short, Pierre Bon-Bon not only saw plainly
that his Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but could discover no indications
of their having existed at any previous period – for the space where eyes
should naturally have been was, I am constrained to say, simply a dead
level of flesh.

It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some
inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon, and the reply of his
Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.

“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon – eyes! did you say? – oh! – ah! – I perceive!
The ridiculous prints, eh, which are in, circulation, have given you a
false idea of my personal appearance? Eyes! – true. Eyes, Pierre Bon-Bon,
are very well in their proper place – that, you would say, is the head? -
right – the head of a worm. To you, likewise, these optics are
indispensable – yet I will convince you that my vision is more penetrating
than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner – a pretty cat- look at
her – observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you behold the thoughts – the
thoughts, I say, – the ideas – the reflections – which are being
engendered in her pericranium? There it is, now – you do not! She is
thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of her mind.
She has just concluded that I am the most distinguished of ecclesiastics,
and that you are the most superficial of metaphysicians. Thus you see I am
not altogether blind; but to one of my profession, the eyes you speak of
would be merely an incumbrance, liable at any time to be put out by a
toasting-iron, or a pitchfork. To you, I allow, these optical affairs are
indispensable. Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use them well; – my vision is the
soul.”

Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and
pouring out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without
scruple, and make himself perfectly at home.

“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his Majesty, tapping
our friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass
after a thorough compliance with his visiter’s injunction. “A clever book
that of yours, upon my honor. It’s a work after my own heart. Your
arrangement of the matter, I think, however, might be improved, and many
of your notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my
most intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill
temper, as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one
solid truth in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint
out of pure compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you
very well know to what divine moral truth I am alluding?”

“Cannot say that I -”

“Indeed! – why it was I who told Aristotle that by sneezing, men
expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis.”

“Which is – hiccup! – undoubtedly the case,” said the metaphysician, while
he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseux, and offered his
snuff-box to the fingers of his visiter.

“There was Plato, too,” continued his Majesty, modestly declining the
snuff-box and the compliment it implied – “there was Plato, too, for whom
I, at one time, felt all the affection of a friend. You knew Plato,
Bon-Bon? – ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons. He met me at Athens, one day,
in the Parthenon, and told me he was distressed for an idea. I bade him
write, down that o nous estin aulos. He said that he would do so, and went
home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience smote me for
having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to
Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher’s chair as he was inditing the
‘aulos.’”

“Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down.
So the sentence now read ‘o nous estin augos’, and is, you perceive, the
fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics.”

“Were you ever at Rome?” asked the restaurateur, as he finished his
second bottle of Mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of
Chambertin.

But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time,” said the
devil, as if reciting some passage from a book – “there was a time when
occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of
all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people,
and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power – at
that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon – at that time only I was in Rome, and I have
no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.”*

{*2} Ils ecrivaient sur la Philosophie ( Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca ) mais
c’etait la Philosophie Grecque. – Condorcet .

“What do you think of – what do you think of – hiccup! – Epicurus?”

“What do I think of whom?” said the devil, in astonishment, “you
cannot surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of
Epicurus! Do you mean me, sir? – I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher
who wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by Diogenes
Laertes.”

“That’s a lie!” said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a
little into his head.

“Very well! – very well, sir! – very well, indeed, sir!” said his
Majesty, apparently much flattered.

“That’s a lie!” repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically; “that’s a -
hiccup! – a lie!”

“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the devil, pacifically, and
Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at argument, thought it his duty to
conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.

“As I was saying,” resumed the visiter – “as I was observing a little
while ago, there are some very outre notions in that book of yours
Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about
the soul? Pray, sir, what is the soul?”

“The – hiccup! – soul,” replied the metaphysician, referring to his
MS., “is undoubtedly-”

“No, sir!”

“Indubitably-”

“No, sir!”

“Indisputably-”

“No, sir!”

“Evidently-”

“No, sir!”

“Incontrovertibly-”

“No, sir!”

“Hiccup! -”

“No, sir!”

“And beyond all question, a-”

“No sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here the philosopher, looking
daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third bottle
of Chambertin.)

“Then – hic-cup! – pray, sir – what – what is it?”

“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” replied his
Majesty, musingly. “I have tasted – that is to say, I have known some very
bad souls, and some too – pretty good ones.” Here he smacked his lips,
and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in his pocket,
was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.

He continued.

“There was the soul of Cratinus – passable: Aristophanes – racy: Plato
- exquisite- not your Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your Plato would
have turned the stomach of Cerberus – faugh! Then let me see! there were
Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius. Then there were
Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus Flaccus, – dear Quinty! as I
called him when he sung a seculare for my amusement, while I toasted him,
in pure good humor, on a fork. But they want flavor, these Romans. One fat
Greek is worth a dozen of them, and besides will keep, which cannot be
said of a Quirite. – Let us taste your Sauterne.”

Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to nil admirari and
endeavored to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however,
conscious of a strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail. Of
this, although extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher took no
notice: – simply kicking the dog, and requesting him to be quiet. The
visiter continued:

“I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle; – you know I am
fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso, to
my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong twang of
Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus – and Titus Livius
was positively Polybius and none other.”

“Hic-cup!” here replied Bon-Bon, and his majesty proceeded:

“But if I have a penchant, Monsieur Bon-Bon – if I have a penchant, it
is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is not every dev – I
mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to choose a philosopher. Long
ones are not good; and the best, if not carefully shelled, are apt to be a
little rancid on account of the gall!”

“Shelled!”

“I mean taken out of the carcass.”

“What do you think of a – hic-cup! – physician?”

“Don’t mention them! – ugh! ugh! ugh!” (Here his Majesty retched
violently.) “I never tasted but one – that rascal Hippocrates! – smelt of
asafoetida – ugh! ugh! ugh! – caught a wretched cold washing him in the
Styx – and after all he gave me the cholera morbus.”

“The – hiccup – wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the – hic-cup! -
absorption of a pill-box!” – and the philosopher dropped a tear.

“After all,” continued the visiter, “after all, if a dev – if a
gentleman wishes to live, he must have more talents than one or two; and
with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy.”

“How so?”

“Why, we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must
know that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to
keep a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death,
unless pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is not good), they will -
smell – you understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be apprehended when
the souls are consigned to us in the usual way.”

“Hiccup! – hiccup! – good God! how do you manage?”

Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the
devil half started from his seat; – however, with a slight sigh, he
recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I tell
you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we must have no more swearing.”

The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough
comprehension and acquiescence, and the visiter continued.

“Why, there are several ways of managing. The most of us starve: some
put up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits vivente corpore,
in which case I find they keep very well.”

“But the body! – hiccup! – the body!”

“The body, the body – well, what of the body? – oh! ah! I perceive.
Why, sir, the body is not at all affected by the transaction. I have made
innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties never
experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and Nero, and
Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and – and a thousand others, who
never knew what it was to have a soul during the latter part of their
lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why possession of his
faculties, mental and corporeal? Who writes a keener epigram? Who reasons
more wittily? Who – but stay! I have his agreement in my pocket-book.”

Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a
number of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the
letters Machi – Maza- Robesp – with the words Caligula, George, Elizabeth.
His Majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and from it read aloud
the following words:

“In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary
to specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d’or, I
being aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer of
this agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called
my soul. (Signed) A….” {*4} (Here His Majesty repeated a name which I
did not feel justified in indicating more unequivocally.)

{*4} Quere-Arouet?

“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon,
he was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a
shadow; Ha! ha! ha! – he! he! he! – hu! hu! hu! Only think of a fricasseed
shadow!”

“Only think – hiccup! – of a fricasseed shadow!” exclaimed our hero,
whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of his
Majesty’s discourse.

“Only think of a hiccup! – fricasseed shadow!! Now, damme! – hiccup! -
humph! If I would have been such a – hiccup! – nincompoop! My soul, Mr. -
humph!”

“Your soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”

“Yes, sir – hiccup! – my soul is-”

“What, sir?”

“No shadow, damme!”

“Did you mean to say-”

“Yes, sir, my soul is – hiccup! – humph! – yes, sir.”

“Did you not intend to assert-”

“My soul is – hiccup! – peculiarly qualified for – hiccup! – a-”

“What, sir?”

“Stew.”

“Ha!”

“Soufflee.”

“Eh!”

“Fricassee.”

“Indeed!”

“Ragout and fricandeau – and see here, my good fellow! I’ll let you
have it- hiccup! – a bargain.” Here the philosopher slapped his Majesty
upon the back.

“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter calmly, at the same
time rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.

“Am supplied at present,” said his Majesty.

“Hiccup – e-h?” said the philosopher.

“Have no funds on hand.”

“What?”

“Besides, very unhandsome in me -”

“Sir!”

“To take advantage of-”

“Hiccup!”

“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”

Here the visiter bowed and withdrew – in what manner could not
precisely be ascertained – but in a well-concerted effort to discharge a
bottle at “the villain,” the slender chain was severed that depended from
the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of the lamp.

THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could ;
but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well
know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave
utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged ; this was a
point definitively settled – but the very definitiveness with which
it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish,
but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger
fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given
Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont,
to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was
at the thought of his immolation.

He had a weak point – this Fortunato – although in other regards
he was a man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on
his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso
spirit. For the most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the
time and opportunity – to practise imposture upon the British and
Austrian millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like
his countrymen , was a quack – but in the matter of old wines he was
sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially : I
was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely
whenever I could.

It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the
carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with
excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore
motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head
was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see
him, that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.

I said to him – “My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How
remarkably well you are looking to-day ! But I have received a pipe
of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts.”

“How ?” said he. “Amontillado ? A pipe ? Impossible ! And in
the middle of the carnival !”

“I have my doubts,” I replied ; “and I was silly enough to pay
the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You
were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.”

“Amontillado !”

“I have my doubts.”

“Amontillado !”

“And I must satisfy them.”

“Amontillado !”

“As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a
critical turn, it is he. He will tell me –”

“Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry.”

“And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for
your own.”

“Come, let us go.”

“Whither ?”

“To your vaults.”

“My friend, no ; I will not impose upon your good nature. I
perceive you have an engagement. Luchesi –”

“I have no engagement ; – come.”

“My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold
with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably
damp. They are encrusted with nitre.”

“Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing.
Amontillado ! You have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he
cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado.”

Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on
a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my
person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.

There were no attendants at home ; they had absconded to make
merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return
until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir
from the house. These orders were sufficient, I well knew, to insure
their immediate disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was
turned.

I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to
Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway
that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding
staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he followed. We came at
length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp
ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.

The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap
jingled as he strode.

“The pipe,” said he.

“It is farther on,” said I ; “but observe the white web-work
which gleams from these cavern walls.”

He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs
that distilled the rheum of intoxication .

“Nitre ?” he asked, at length.

“Nitre,” I replied. “How long have you had that cough ?”

“Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! – ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! – ugh ! ugh ! ugh !
- ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! – ugh ! ugh ! ugh !”

My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.

“It is nothing,” he said, at last.

“Come,” I said, with decision, “we will go back ; your health is
precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved ; you are
happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no
matter. We will go back ; you will be ill, and I cannot be
responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi –”

“Enough,” he said ; “the cough is a mere nothing; it will not
kill me. I shall not die of a cough.”

“True – true,” I replied ; “and, indeed, I had no intention of
alarming you unnecessarily – but you should use all proper caution.
A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps.”

Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long
row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.

“Drink,” I said, presenting him the wine.

He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me
familiarly, while his bells jingled.

“I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”

“And I to your long life.”

He again took my arm, and we proceeded.

“These vaults,” he said, “are extensive.”

“The Montresors,” I replied, “were a great and numerous family.”

“I forget your arms.”

“A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure ; the foot crushes a
serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.”

“And the motto ?”

“Nemo me impune lacessit .”

“Good !” he said.

The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own
fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled
bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost
recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold
to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.

“The nitre !” I said : “see, it increases. It hangs like moss
upon the vaults. We are below the river’s bed. The drops of
moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is
too late. Your cough –”

“It is nothing,” he said ; “let us go on. But first, another
draught of the Medoc.”

I broke and reached him a flaon of De Grve. He emptied it at a
breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw
the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.

I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement – a
grotesque one.

“You do not comprehend ?” he said.

“Not I,” I replied.

“Then you are not of the brotherhood.”

“How ?”

“You are not of the masons.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “yes, yes.”

“You ? Impossible ! A mason ?”

“A mason,” I replied.

“A sign,” he said.

“It is this,” I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the
folds of my roquelaire.

“You jest,” he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “But let us
proceed to the Amontillado.”

“Be it so,” I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and
again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued
our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of
low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a
deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux
rather to glow than flame.

At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less
spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the
vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris.
Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this
manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay
promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some
size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones,
we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in
width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been
constructed for no especial use in itself, but formed merely the
interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the
catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of
solid granite.

It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch,
endeavored to pry into the depths of the recess. Its termination the
feeble light did not enable us to see.

“Proceed,” I said ; “herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi
–”

“He is an ignoramus,” interrupted my friend, as he stepped
unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an
instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his
progress arrested by the rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment
more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two
iron staples, distant from each other about two feet, horizontally.
From one of these depended a short chain, from the other a padlock.
Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few
seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist.
Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.

“Pass your hand,” I said, “over the wall ; you cannot help
feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me
implore you to return. No ? Then I must positively leave you.
But I must first render you all the little attentions in my power.”

“The Amontillado !” ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from
his astonishment.

“True,” I replied ; “the Amontillado.”

As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of
which I have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a
quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with
the aid of my trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of
the niche.

I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I
discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure
worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning
cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken
man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second
tier, and the third, and the fourth ; and then I heard the furious
vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes,
during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction,
I ceased my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the
clanking subsided , I resumed the trowel, and finished without
interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The wall
was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and
holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few feeble rays
upon the figure within.

A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from
the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back.
For a brief moment I hesitated – I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier,
I began to grope with it about the recess : but the thought of an
instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the
catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied
to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed – I aided – I
surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the
clamorer grew still.

It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had
completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished
a portion of the last and the eleventh ; there remained but a
single stone to be fitted and plastered in. I struggled with its
weight ; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now
there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected the hairs upon
my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in
recognising as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said -

“Ha ! ha ! ha ! – he ! he ! – a very good joke indeed – an
excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the
palazzo – he ! he ! he ! – over our wine – he ! he ! he !”

“The Amontillado !” I said.

“He ! he ! he ! – he ! he ! he ! – yes, the Amontillado. But
is it not getting late ? Will not they be awaiting us at the
palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest ? Let us be gone.”

“Yes,” I said, “let us be gone.”

“ For the love of God, Montressor ! “

“Yes,” I said, “for the love of God !”

But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew
impatient. I called aloud -

“Fortunato !”

No answer. I called again -

“Fortunato !”

No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture
and let it fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling
of the bells. My heart grew sick – on account of the dampness of the
catacombs. I hastened to make an end of my labor. I forced the last
stone into its position ; I plastered it up. Against the new
masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a
century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat !

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our
ways ; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the
vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, which have
a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.

Joseph Glanville.

WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some
minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you
on this route as well as the youngest of my sons ; but, about three
years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened to
mortal man – or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of -
and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken
me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man – but I am not.
It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty
black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so
that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow.
Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without
getting giddy ?”

The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown
himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over
it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on
its extreme and slippery edge – this “little cliff” arose, a sheer
unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen
hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have
tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so
deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I
fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me,
and dared not even glance upward at the sky – while I struggled in
vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the
mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long
before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and
look out into the distance.

“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have
brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the
scene of that event I mentioned – and to tell you the whole story
with the spot just under your eye.”

“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him – “we are now close upon the Norwegian coast – in
the sixty-eighth degree of latitude – in the great province of
Nordland – and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon
whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a
little higher – hold on to the grass if you feel giddy – so – and
look out, beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose
waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian
geographer’s account of the Mare Tenebrarum . A panorama more
deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right
and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like
ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff,
whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the
surf which reared high up against its white and ghastly crest,
howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the promontory upon
whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six
miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island ;
or, more properly, its position was discernible through the
wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer
the land, arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren,
and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more
distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it.
Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a
brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and
constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here
nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross
dashing of water in every direction – as well in the teeth of the
wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate
vicinity of the rocks.

“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by
the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the
northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm,
Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off – between Moskoe and Vurrgh – are
Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true
names of the places – but why it has been thought necessary to name
them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear
anything ? Do you see any change in the water ?”

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to
which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had
caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the
summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually
increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon
an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what
seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was
rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while
I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment
added to its speed – to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the
whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury ; but
it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its
sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a
thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied
convulsion – heaving, boiling, hissing – gyrating in gigantic and
innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the
eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except
in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the
whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam
became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at
length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into
combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided
vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly
- very suddenly – this assumed a distinct and definite existence, in
a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was
represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of
this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior,
as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and
jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some
forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying
and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling
voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract
of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I
threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an
excess of nervous agitation.

“This,” said I at length, to the old man – “this can be nothing
else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrm.”

“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-strm, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”

The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me
for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most
circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either
of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene – or of the wild
bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder. I am
not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it,
nor at what time ; but it could neither have been from the summit of
Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his
description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details,
although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an
impression of the spectacle.

“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms ; but on the other side, toward
Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient
passage for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks,
which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the
stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a
boisterous rapidity ; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea
is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts ; the
noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are
of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its
attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom,
and there beat to pieces against the rocks ; and when the water
relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these
intervals of tranquility are only at the turn of the ebb and flood,
and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence
gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury
heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile
of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not
guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise
happens frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are
overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe
their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to
disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to
Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared
terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine
trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and
torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly
shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are
whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux
of the sea – it being constantly high and low water every six hours.
In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged
with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on
the coast fell to the ground.”

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this
could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the
vortex. The “forty fathoms” must have reference only to portions of
the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The
depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strm must be immeasurably greater
; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained
from even the sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may
be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this
pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling
at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a
matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the
bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the
largest ship of the line in existence, coming within the influence of
that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the
hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once.

The attempts to account for the phenomenon – some of which, I
remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal – now wore a
very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received
is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe
islands, “have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and
falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves,
which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a
cataract ; and thus the higher the flood rises, the deeper must the
fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the
prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser
experiments.” – These are the words of the Encyclopdia Britannica.
Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the
Maelstrm is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very
remote part – the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in
one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as
I gazed, my imagination most readily assented ; and, mentioning it
to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although
it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the
Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion
he confessed his inability to comprehend it ; and here I agreed with
him – for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether
unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.

“You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old man,
“and if you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and
deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will
convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-strm.”

I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.

“Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of
about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of
fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all
violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities,
if one has only the courage to attempt it ; but among the whole of
the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a regular
business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual
grounds are a great way lower down to the southward. There fish can
be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places
are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however,
not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance ; so
that we often got in a single day, what the more timid of the craft
could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of
desperate speculation – the risk of life standing instead of labor,
and courage answering for capital.

“We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast
than this ; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take
advantage of the fifteen minutes’ slack to push across the main
channel of the Moskoe-strm, far above the pool, and then drop down
upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the
eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until
nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home.
We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for
going and coming – one that we felt sure would not fail us before our
return – and we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice,
during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on
account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here
; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving
to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival,
and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this
occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of
everything, (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so
violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if
it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross
currents – here to-day and gone to-morrow – which drove us under the
lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

“I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered ‘on the grounds’ – it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather – but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-strm itself without accident ; although at times my heart
has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or
before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought
it at starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish,
while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother
had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own.
These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the
sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing – but, somehow, although we
ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones
get into the danger – for, after all is said and done, it was a
horrible danger, and that is the truth.

“It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going
to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18-, a day
which the people of this part of the world will never forget – for it
was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out
of the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the
afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,
while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us
could not have foreseen what was to follow.

“The three of us – my two brothers and myself – had crossed over
to the islands about two o’clock P. M., and had soon nearly loaded
the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty
that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven, by my
watch , when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst
of the Strm at slack water, which we knew would be at eight.

“We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for
some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger,
for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at
once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was
most unusual – something that had never happened to us before – and I
began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put
the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the
eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to return to the
anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered
with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing
velocity.

“In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and
we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state
of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think
about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us – in less than
two the sky was entirely overcast – and what with this and the
driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each
other in the smack.

“Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing.
The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced any thing like it. We
had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us ; but, at
the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been
sawed off – the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had
lashed himself to it for safety.

“Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon
water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the
bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when
about to cross the Strm, by way of precaution against the chopping
seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once -
for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother
escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of
ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I
threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of
the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the
fore-mast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this – which
was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done – for I was too
much flurried to think.

“For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all
this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand
it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with
my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave
herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and
thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to
get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my
senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp
my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I
had made sure that he was overboard – but the next moment all this
joy was turned into horror – for he put his mouth close to my ear,
and screamed out the word ‘ Moskoe-strm ! ‘

“No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I
shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the
ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough – I knew what
he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on,
we were bound for the whirl of the Strm, and nothing could save us !

“You perceive that in crossing the Strm channel, we always
went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and
then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack – but now we were
driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this !
‘To be sure,’ I thought, ‘we shall get there just about the slack -
there is some little hope in that’ – but in the next moment I cursed
myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew
very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninety-gun
ship.

“By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or
perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at
all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind,
and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A
singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every
direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there
burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky – as clear as I
ever saw – and of a deep bright blue – and through it there blazed
forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to
wear. She lit up every thing about us with the greatest distinctness
- but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up !

“I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother – but, in
some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased
that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at
the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking
as pale as death, and held up one of his finger, as if to say
‘listen ! ‘

“At first I could not make out what he meant – but soon a hideous
thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not
going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into
tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at
seven o’clock ! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl
of the Strm was in full fury !

“When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden,
the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to
slip from beneath her – which appears very strange to a landsman -
and this is what is called riding, in sea phrase. Well, so far we
had ridden the swells very cleverly ; but presently a gigantic sea
happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it as
it rose – up – up – as if into the sky. I would not have believed
that any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep,
a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was
falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up
I had thrown a quick glance around – and that one glance was all
sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-Strm
whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead – but no more like
the every-day Moskoe-Strm, than the whirl as you now see it is like
a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to
expect, I should not have recognised the place at all. As it was, I
involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves
together as if in a spasm.

“It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we
suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat
made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new
direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of
the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek – such a
sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many
thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were
now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl ; and I
thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the
abyss – down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the
amazing velocity with which we wore borne along. The boat did not
seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble
upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl,
and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood
like a huge writhing wall between us and the horizon.

“It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of
the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it.
Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of
that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that
strung my nerves.

“It may look like boasting – but what I tell you is truth – I
began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a
manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a
consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a
manifestation of God’s power. I do believe that I blushed with shame
when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became
possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I
positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice
I was going to make ; and my principal grief was that I should never
be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I
should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man’s
mind in such extremity – and I have often thought since, that the
revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a
little light-headed.

“There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession ; and this was the cessation of the wind, which
could not reach us in our present situation – for, as you saw
yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed
of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black,
mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you
can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and
spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away
all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great
measure, rid of these annoyances – just us death-condemned felons in
prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom
is yet uncertain.

“How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to
say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather
than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the
surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All
this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the
stern, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely
lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck
that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we
approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and
made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he
endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us
both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him
attempt this act – although I knew he was a madman when he did it – a
raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to
contest the point with him. I knew it could make no difference
whether either of us held on at all ; so I let him have the bolt,
and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in
doing ; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even
keel – only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters
of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when
we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the
abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.

“As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had
instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes.
For some seconds I dared not open them – while I expected instant
destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my
death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I
still lived. The sense of falling had ceased ; and the motion of the
vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam,
with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage, and
looked once again upon the scene.

“Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and
admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be
hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a
funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose
perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for
the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the
gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the
full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have
already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the
black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.

“At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately.
The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I
recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively
downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed
view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface
of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel – that is to say, her
deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water – but this latter
sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed
to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not help observing,
nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my
hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead
level ; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we
revolved.

“The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the
profound gulf ; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on
account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and
over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and
tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time
and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the
clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together
at the bottom – but the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of
that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.

“Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam
above, had carried us a great distance down the slope ; but our
farther descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we
swept – not with any uniform movement – but in dizzying swings and
jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards – sometimes
nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at
each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.

“Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we
were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in
the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible
fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of
trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture,
broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already described the
unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors.
It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my
dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the
numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been
delirious – for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the
relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below.
‘This fir tree,’ I found myself at one time saying, ‘will certainly
be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,’ – and
then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant
ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making
several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all – this fact
- the fact of my invariable miscalculation – set me upon a train of
reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat
heavily once more.

“It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a
more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly
from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of
buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been
absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-strm. By far the
greater number of the articles were shattered in the most
extraordinary way – so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance
of being stuck full of splinters – but then I distinctly recollected
that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now
I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the
roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely
absorbed – that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period
of the tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after
entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the
flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it
possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up
again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those
which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made,
also, three important observations. The first was, that, as a general
rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent – the
second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical,
and the other of any other shape , the superiority in speed of
descent was with the sphere – the third, that, between two masses of
equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape,
the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, I have
had several conversations on this subject with an old school-master
of the district ; and it was from him that I learned the use of the
words ‘cylinder’ and ’sphere.’ He explained to me – although I have
forgotten the explanation – how what I observed was, in fact, the
natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments – and
showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex,
offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater
difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form whatever.

“There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in
enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them
to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed
something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel,
while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first
opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up
above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original
station.

“I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself
securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose
from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I
attracted my brother’s attention by signs, pointed to the floating
barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him
understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he
comprehended my design – but, whether this was the case or not, he
shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by
the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted
of no delay ; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his
fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which
secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the
sea, without another moment’s hesitation.

“The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is
myself who now tell you this tale – as you see that I did escape -
and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape
was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther
to say – I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have
been an hour, or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when,
having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four
wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my loved brother
with it, plunged headlong, at once and forever, into the chaos of
foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little
farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the
spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in
the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast
funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the
whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the froth
and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly
to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full
moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the
surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and
above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-strm had been . It was
the hour of the slack – but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves
from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the
channel of the Strm, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast
into the ‘grounds’ of the fishermen. A boat picked me up – exhausted
from fatigue – and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from
the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old
mates and daily companions – but they knew me no more than they would
have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair which had been
raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say
too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told
them my story – they did not believe it. I now tell it to you – and
I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry
fishermen of Lofoden.”

EVERYBODY knows, in a general way, that the finest place in the world
is — or, alas, was — the Dutch borough of Vondervotteimittiss. Yet
as it lies some distance from any of the main roads, being in a
somewhat out-of-the-way situation, there are perhaps very few of my
readers who have ever paid it a visit. For the benefit of those who
have not, therefore, it will be only proper that I should enter into
some account of it. And this is indeed the more necessary, as with
the hope of enlisting public sympathy in behalf of the inhabitants, I
design here to give a history of the calamitous events which have so
lately occurred within its limits. No one who knows me will doubt
that the duty thus self-imposed will be executed to the best of my
ability, with all that rigid impartiality, all that cautious
examination into facts, and diligent collation of authorities, which
should ever distinguish him who aspires to the title of historian.

By the united aid of medals, manuscripts, and inscriptions, I am
enabled to say, positively, that the borough of Vondervotteimittiss
has existed, from its origin, in precisely the same condition which
it at present preserves. Of the date of this origin, however, I
grieve that I can only speak with that species of indefinite
definiteness which mathematicians are, at times, forced to put up
with in certain algebraic formulae. The date, I may thus say, in
regard to the remoteness of its antiquity, cannot be less than any
assignable quantity whatsoever.

Touching the derivation of the name Vondervotteimittiss, I confess
myself, with sorrow, equally at fault. Among a multitude of opinions
upon this delicate point- some acute, some learned, some sufficiently
the reverse — I am able to select nothing which ought to be
considered satisfactory. Perhaps the idea of Grogswigg- nearly
coincident with that of Kroutaplenttey — is to be cautiously
preferred. — It runs: — Vondervotteimittis — Vonder, lege Donder
– Votteimittis, quasi und Bleitziz- Bleitziz obsol: — pro Blitzen.”
This derivative, to say the truth, is still countenanced by some
traces of the electric fluid evident on the summit of the steeple of
the House of the Town-Council. I do not choose, however, to commit
myself on a theme of such importance, and must refer the reader
desirous of information to the “Oratiunculae de Rebus
Praeter-Veteris,” of Dundergutz. See, also, Blunderbuzzard “De
Derivationibus,” pp. 27 to 5010, Folio, Gothic edit., Red and Black
character, Catch-word and No Cypher; wherein consult, also, marginal
notes in the autograph of Stuffundpuff, with the Sub-Commentaries of
Gruntundguzzell.

Notwithstanding the obscurity which thus envelops the date of the
foundation of Vondervotteimittis, and the derivation of its name,
there can be no doubt, as I said before, that it has always existed
as we find it at this epoch. The oldest man in the borough can
remember not the slightest difference in the appearance of any
portion of it; and, indeed, the very suggestion of such a possibility
is considered an insult. The site of the village is in a perfectly
circular valley, about a quarter of a mile in circumference, and
entirely surrounded by gentle hills, over whose summit the people
have never yet ventured to pass. For this they assign the very good
reason that they do not believe there is anything at all on the other
side.

Round the skirts of the valley (which is quite level, and paved
throughout with flat tiles), extends a continuous row of sixty little
houses. These, having their backs on the hills, must look, of course,
to the centre of the plain, which is just sixty yards from the front
door of each dwelling. Every house has a small garden before it, with
a circular path, a sun-dial, and twenty-four cabbages. The buildings
themselves are so precisely alike, that one can in no manner be
distinguished from the other. Owing to the vast antiquity, the style
of architecture is somewhat odd, but it is not for that reason the
less strikingly picturesque. They are fashioned of hard-burned little
bricks, red, with black ends, so that the walls look like a
chess-board upon a great scale. The gables are turned to the front,
and there are cornices, as big as all the rest of the house, over the
eaves and over the main doors. The windows are narrow and deep, with
very tiny panes and a great deal of sash. On the roof is a vast
quantity of tiles with long curly ears. The woodwork, throughout, is
of a dark hue and there is much carving about it, with but a trifling
variety of pattern for, time out of mind, the carvers of
Vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two
objects — a time-piece and a cabbage. But these they do exceedingly
well, and intersperse them, with singular ingenuity, wherever they
find room for the chisel.

The dwellings are as much alike inside as out, and the furniture is
all upon one plan. The floors are of square tiles, the chairs and
tables of black-looking wood with thin crooked legs and puppy feet.
The mantelpieces are wide and high, and have not only time-pieces and
cabbages sculptured over the front, but a real time-piece, which
makes a prodigious ticking, on the top in the middle, with a
flower-pot containing a cabbage standing on each extremity by way of
outrider. Between each cabbage and the time-piece, again, is a little
China man having a large stomach with a great round hole in it,
through which is seen the dial-plate of a watch.

The fireplaces are large and deep, with fierce crooked-looking
fire-dogs. There is constantly a rousing fire, and a huge pot over
it, full of sauer-kraut and pork, to which the good woman of the
house is always busy in attending. She is a little fat old lady, with
blue eyes and a red face, and wears a huge cap like a sugar-loaf,
ornamented with purple and yellow ribbons. Her dress is of
orange-colored linsey-woolsey, made very full behind and very short
in the waist — and indeed very short in other respects, not reaching
below the middle of her leg. This is somewhat thick, and so are her
ankles, but she has a fine pair of green stockings to cover them. Her
shoes — of pink leather — are fastened each with a bunch of yellow
ribbons puckered up in the shape of a cabbage. In her left hand she
has a little heavy Dutch watch; in her right she wields a ladle for
the sauerkraut and pork. By her side there stands a fat tabby cat,
with a gilt toy-repeater tied to its tail, which “the boys” have
there fastened by way of a quiz.

The boys themselves are, all three of them, in the garden attending
the pig. They are each two feet in height. They have three-cornered
cocked hats, purple waistcoats reaching down to their thighs,
buckskin knee-breeches, red stockings, heavy shoes with big silver
buckles, long surtout coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl.
Each, too, has a pipe in his mouth, and a little dumpy watch in his
right hand. He takes a puff and a look, and then a look and a puff.
The pig- which is corpulent and lazy — is occupied now in picking up
the stray leaves that fall from the cabbages, and now in giving a
kick behind at the gilt repeater, which the urchins have also tied to
his tail in order to make him look as handsome as the cat.

Right at the front door, in a high-backed leather-bottomed armed
chair, with crooked legs and puppy feet like the tables, is seated
the old man of the house himself. He is an exceedingly puffy little
old gentleman, with big circular eyes and a huge double chin. His
dress resembles that of the boys — and I need say nothing farther
about it. All the difference is, that his pipe is somewhat bigger
than theirs and he can make a greater smoke. Like them, he has a
watch, but he carries his watch in his pocket. To say the truth, he
has something of more importance than a watch to attend to — and
what that is, I shall presently explain. He sits with his right leg
upon his left knee, wears a grave countenance, and always keeps one
of his eyes, at least, resolutely bent upon a certain remarkable
object in the centre of the plain.

This object is situated in the steeple of the House of the Town
Council. The Town Council are all very little, round, oily,
intelligent men, with big saucer eyes and fat double chins, and have
their coats much longer and their shoe-buckles much bigger than the
ordinary inhabitants of Vondervotteimittiss. Since my sojourn in the
borough, they have had several special meetings, and have adopted
these three important resolutions:

“That it is wrong to alter the good old course of things:”

“That there is nothing tolerable out of Vondervotteimittiss:” and-

“That we will stick by our clocks and our cabbages.”

Above the session-room of the Council is the steeple, and in the
steeple is the belfry, where exists, and has existed time out of
mind, the pride and wonder of the village — the great clock of the
borough of Vondervotteimittiss. And this is the object to which the
eyes of the old gentlemen are turned who sit in the leather-bottomed
arm-chairs.

The great clock has seven faces — one in each of the seven sides of
the steeple — so that it can be readily seen from all quarters. Its
faces are large and white, and its hands heavy and black. There is a
belfry-man whose sole duty is to attend to it; but this duty is the
most perfect of sinecures — for the clock of Vondervotteimittis was
never yet known to have anything the matter with it. Until lately,
the bare supposition of such a thing was considered heretical. From
the remotest period of antiquity to which the archives have
reference, the hours have been regularly struck by the big bell. And,
indeed the case was just the same with all the other clocks and
watches in the borough. Never was such a place for keeping the true
time. When the large clapper thought proper to say “Twelve o’clock!”
all its obedient followers opened their throats simultaneously, and
responded like a very echo. In short, the good burghers were fond of
their sauer-kraut, but then they were proud of their clocks.

All people who hold sinecure offices are held in more or less
respect, and as the belfry — man of Vondervotteimittiss has the most
perfect of sinecures, he is the most perfectly respected of any man
in the world. He is the chief dignitary of the borough, and the very
pigs look up to him with a sentiment of reverence. His coat-tail is
very far longer — his pipe, his shoe — buckles, his eyes, and his
stomach, very far bigger — than those of any other old gentleman in
the village; and as to his chin, it is not only double, but triple.

I have thus painted the happy estate of Vondervotteimittiss: alas,
that so fair a picture should ever experience a reverse!

There has been long a saying among the wisest inhabitants, that “no
good can come from over the hills”; and it really seemed that the
words had in them something of the spirit of prophecy. It wanted five
minutes of noon, on the day before yesterday, when there appeared a
very odd-looking object on the summit of the ridge of the eastward.
Such an occurrence, of course, attracted universal attention, and
every little old gentleman who sat in a leather-bottomed arm-chair
turned one of his eyes with a stare of dismay upon the phenomenon,
still keeping the other upon the clock in the steeple.

By the time that it wanted only three minutes to noon, the droll
object in question was perceived to be a very diminutive
foreign-looking young man. He descended the hills at a great rate, so
that every body had soon a good look at him. He was really the most
finicky little personage that had ever been seen in
Vondervotteimittiss. His countenance was of a dark snuff-color, and
he had a long hooked nose, pea eyes, a wide mouth, and an excellent
set of teeth, which latter he seemed anxious of displaying, as he was
grinning from ear to ear. What with mustachios and whiskers, there
was none of the rest of his face to be seen. His head was uncovered,
and his hair neatly done up in papillotes. His dress was a
tight-fitting swallow-tailed black coat (from one of whose pockets
dangled a vast length of white handkerchief), black kerseymere
knee-breeches, black stockings, and stumpy-looking pumps, with huge
bunches of black satin ribbon for bows. Under one arm he carried a
huge chapeau-de-bras, and under the other a fiddle nearly five times
as big as himself. In his left hand was a gold snuff-box, from which,
as he capered down the hill, cutting all manner of fantastic steps,
he took snuff incessantly with an air of the greatest possible
self-satisfaction. God bless me! — here was a sight for the honest
burghers of Vondervotteimittiss!

To speak plainly, the fellow had, in spite of his grinning, an
audacious and sinister kind of face; and as he curvetted right into
the village, the old stumpy appearance of his pumps excited no little
suspicion; and many a burgher who beheld him that day would have
given a trifle for a peep beneath the white cambric handkerchief
which hung so obtrusively from the pocket of his swallow-tailed coat.
But what mainly occasioned a righteous indignation was, that the
scoundrelly popinjay, while he cut a fandango here, and a whirligig
there, did not seem to have the remotest idea in the world of such a
thing as keeping time in his steps.

The good people of the borough had scarcely a chance, however, to get
their eyes thoroughly open, when, just as it wanted half a minute of
noon, the rascal bounced, as I say, right into the midst of them;
gave a chassez here, and a balancez there; and then, after a
pirouette and a pas-de-zephyr, pigeon-winged himself right up into
the belfry of the House of the Town Council, where the
wonder-stricken belfry-man sat smoking in a state of dignity and
dismay. But the little chap seized him at once by the nose; gave it a
swing and a pull; clapped the big chapeau de-bras upon his head;
knocked it down over his eyes and mouth; and then, lifting up the big
fiddle, beat him with it so long and so soundly, that what with the
belfry-man being so fat, and the fiddle being so hollow, you would
have sworn that there was a regiment of double-bass drummers all
beating the devil’s tattoo up in the belfry of the steeple of
Vondervotteimittiss.

There is no knowing to what desperate act of vengeance this
unprincipled attack might have aroused the inhabitants, but for the
important fact that it now wanted only half a second of noon. The
bell was about to strike, and it was a matter of absolute and
pre-eminent necessity that every body should look well at his watch.
It was evident, however, that just at this moment the fellow in the
steeple was doing something that he had no business to do with the
clock. But as it now began to strike, nobody had any time to attend
to his manoeuvres, for they had all to count the strokes of the bell
as it sounded.

“One!” said the clock.

“Von!” echoed every little old gentleman in every leather-bottomed
arm-chair in Vondervotteimittiss. “Von!” said his watch also; “von!”
said the watch of his vrow; and “von!” said the watches of the boys,
and the little gilt repeaters on the tails of the cat and pig.

“Two!” continued the big bell; and

“Doo!” repeated all the repeaters.

“Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!” said the bell.

“Dree! Vour! Fibe! Sax! Seben! Aight! Noin! Den!” answered the
others.

“Eleven!” said the big one.

“Eleben!” assented the little ones.

“Twelve!” said the bell.

“Dvelf!” they replied perfectly satisfied, and dropping their voices.

“Und dvelf it is!” said all the little old gentlemen, putting up
their watches. But the big bell had not done with them yet.

“Thirteen!” said he.

“Der Teufel!” gasped the little old gentlemen, turning pale, dropping
their pipes, and putting down all their right legs from over their
left knees.

“Der Teufel!” groaned they, “Dirteen! Dirteen!! — Mein Gott, it is
Dirteen o’clock!!”

Why attempt to describe the terrible scene which ensued? All
Vondervotteimittiss flew at once into a lamentable state of uproar.

“Vot is cum’d to mein pelly?” roared all the boys — “I’ve been ongry
for dis hour!”

“Vot is com’d to mein kraut?” screamed all the vrows, “It has been
done to rags for this hour!”

“Vot is cum’d to mein pipe?” swore all the little old gentlemen,
“Donder and Blitzen; it has been smoked out for dis hour!” — and
they filled them up again in a great rage, and sinking back in their
arm-chairs, puffed away so fast and so fiercely that the whole valley
was immediately filled with impenetrable smoke.

Meantime the cabbages all turned very red in the face, and it seemed
as if old Nick himself had taken possession of every thing in the
shape of a timepiece. The clocks carved upon the furniture took to
dancing as if bewitched, while those upon the mantel-pieces could
scarcely contain themselves for fury, and kept such a continual
striking of thirteen, and such a frisking and wriggling of their
pendulums as was really horrible to see. But, worse than all, neither
the cats nor the pigs could put up any longer with the behavior of
the little repeaters tied to their tails, and resented it by
scampering all over the place, scratching and poking, and squeaking
and screeching, and caterwauling and squalling, and flying into the
faces, and running under the petticoats of the people, and creating
altogether the most abominable din and confusion which it is possible
for a reasonable person to conceive. And to make matters still more
distressing, the rascally little scape-grace in the steeple was
evidently exerting himself to the utmost. Every now and then one
might catch a glimpse of the scoundrel through the smoke. There he
sat in the belfry upon the belfry-man, who was lying flat upon his
back. In his teeth the villain held the bell-rope, which he kept
jerking about with his head, raising such a clatter that my ears ring
again even to think of it. On his lap lay the big fiddle, at which he
was scraping, out of all time and tune, with both hands, making a
great show, the nincompoop! of playing “Judy O’Flannagan and Paddy
O’Rafferty.”

Affairs being thus miserably situated, I left the place in disgust,
and now appeal for aid to all lovers of correct time and fine kraut.
Let us proceed in a body to the borough, and restore the ancient
order of things in Vondervotteimittiss by ejecting that little fellow
from the steeple.

CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE EXACT SCIENCES.

Hey, diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle

SINCE the world began there have been two Jeremys. The one wrote a
Jeremiad about usury, and was called Jeremy Bentham. He has been much
admired by Mr. John Neal, and was a great man in a small way. The
other gave name to the most important of the Exact Sciences, and was
a great man in a great way — I may say, indeed, in the very greatest
of ways.

Diddling — or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle — is
sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing
diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a
tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining- not
the thing, diddling, in itself — but man, as an animal that diddles.
Had Plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of
the picked chicken.

Very pertinently it was demanded of Plato, why a picked chicken,
which was clearly “a biped without feathers,” was not, according to
his own definition, a man? But I am not to be bothered by any similar
query. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that
diddles but man. It will take an entire hen-coop of picked chickens
to get over that.

What constitutes the essence, the nare, the principle of diddling is,
in fact, peculiar to the class of creatures that wear coats and
pantaloons. A crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man
diddles. To diddle is his destiny. “Man was made to mourn,” says the
poet. But not so: — he was made to diddle. This is his aim — his
object- his end. And for this reason when a man’s diddled we say he’s
“done.”

Diddling, rightly considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients
are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity,
nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin.

Minuteness: — Your diddler is minute. His operations are upon a
small scale. His business is retail, for cash, or approved paper at
sight. Should he ever be tempted into magnificent speculation, he
then, at once, loses his distinctive features, and becomes what we
term “financier.” This latter word conveys the diddling idea in every
respect except that of magnitude. A diddler may thus be regarded as a
banker in petto — a “financial operation,” as a diddle at
Brobdignag. The one is to the other, as Homer to “Flaccus” — as a
Mastodon to a mouse — as the tail of a comet to that of a pig.

Interest: — Your diddler is guided by self-interest. He scorns to
diddle for the mere sake of the diddle. He has an object in view- his
pocket — and yours. He regards always the main chance. He looks to
Number One. You are Number Two, and must look to yourself.

Perseverance: — Your diddler perseveres. He is not readily
discouraged. Should even the banks break, he cares nothing about it.
He steadily pursues his end, and

Ut canis a corio nunquam absterrebitur uncto. so he never lets go of
his game.

Ingenuity: — Your diddler is ingenious. He has constructiveness
large. He understands plot. He invents and circumvents. Were he not
Alexander he would be Diogenes. Were he not a diddler, he would be a
maker of patent rat-traps or an angler for trout.

Audacity: — Your diddler is audacious. — He is a bold man. He
carries the war into Africa. He conquers all by assault. He would not
fear the daggers of Frey Herren. With a little more prudence Dick
Turpin would have made a good diddler; with a trifle less blarney,
Daniel O’Connell; with a pound or two more brains Charles the
Twelfth.

Nonchalance: — Your diddler is nonchalant. He is not at all nervous.
He never had any nerves. He is never seduced into a flurry. He is
never put out — unless put out of doors. He is cool — cool as a
cucumber. He is calm — “calm as a smile from Lady Bury.” He is easy-
easy as an old glove, or the damsels of ancient Baiae.

Originality: — Your diddler is original — conscientiously so. His
thoughts are his own. He would scorn to employ those of another. A
stale trick is his aversion. He would return a purse, I am sure, upon
discovering that he had obtained it by an unoriginal diddle.

Impertinence. — Your diddler is impertinent. He swaggers. He sets
his arms a-kimbo. He thrusts. his hands in his trowsers’ pockets. He
sneers in your face. He treads on your corns. He eats your dinner, he
drinks your wine, he borrows your money, he pulls your nose, he kicks
your poodle, and he kisses your wife.

Grin: — Your true diddler winds up all with a grin. But this nobody
sees but himself. He grins when his daily work is done — when his
allotted labors are accomplished — at night in his own closet, and
altogether for his own private entertainment. He goes home. He locks
his door. He divests himself of his clothes. He puts out his candle.
He gets into bed. He places his head upon the pillow. All this done,
and your diddler grins. This is no hypothesis. It is a matter of
course. I reason a priori, and a diddle would be no diddle without a
grin.

The origin of the diddle is referrable to the infancy of the Human
Race. Perhaps the first diddler was Adam. At all events, we can trace
the science back to a very remote period of antiquity. The moderns,
however, have brought it to a perfection never dreamed of by our
thick-headed progenitors. Without pausing to speak of the “old saws,”
therefore, I shall content myself with a compendious account of some
of the more “modern instances.”

A very good diddle is this. A housekeeper in want of a sofa, for
instance, is seen to go in and out of several cabinet warehouses. At
length she arrives at one offering an excellent variety. She is
accosted, and invited to enter, by a polite and voluble individual at
the door. She finds a sofa well adapted to her views, and upon
inquiring the price, is surprised and delighted to hear a sum named
at least twenty per cent. lower than her expectations. She hastens to
make the purchase, gets a bill and receipt, leaves her address, with
a request that the article be sent home as speedily as possible, and
retires amid a profusion of bows from the shopkeeper. The night
arrives and no sofa. A servant is sent to make inquiry about the
delay. The whole transaction is denied. No sofa has been sold — no
money received — except by the diddler, who played shop-keeper for
the nonce.

Our cabinet warehouses are left entirely unattended, and thus afford
every facility for a trick of this kind. Visiters enter, look at
furniture, and depart unheeded and unseen. Should any one wish to
purchase, or to inquire the price of an article, a bell is at hand,
and this is considered amply sufficient.

Again, quite a respectable diddle is this. A well-dressed individual
enters a shop, makes a purchase to the value of a dollar; finds, much
to his vexation, that he has left his pocket-book in another coat
pocket; and so says to the shopkeeper-

“My dear sir, never mind; just oblige me, will you, by sending the
bundle home? But stay! I really believe that I have nothing less than
a five dollar bill, even there. However, you can send four dollars in
change with the bundle, you know.”

“Very good, sir,” replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at once, a
lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer. “I know
fellows,” he says to himself, “who would just have put the goods
under their arm, and walked off with a promise to call and pay the
dollar as they came by in the afternoon.”

A boy is sent with the parcel and change. On the route, quite
accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims:

“Ah! This is my bundle, I see — I thought you had been home with it,
long ago. Well, go on! My wife, Mrs. Trotter, will give you the five
dollars — I left instructions with her to that effect. The change
you might as well give to me — I shall want some silver for the Post
Office. Very good! One, two, is this a good quarter?- three, four –
quite right! Say to Mrs. Trotter that you met me, and be sure now and
do not loiter on the way.”

The boy doesn’t loiter at all — but he is a very long time in
getting back from his errand — for no lady of the precise name of
Mrs. Trotter is to be discovered. He consoles himself, however, that
he has not been such a fool as to leave the goods without the money,
and re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air, feels sensibly
hurt and indignant when his master asks him what has become of the
change.

A very simple diddle, indeed, is this. The captain of a ship, which
is about to sail, is presented by an official looking person with an
unusually moderate bill of city charges. Glad to get off so easily,
and confused by a hundred duties pressing upon him all at once, he
discharges the claim forthwith. In about fifteen minutes, another and
less reasonable bill is handed him by one who soon makes it evident
that the first collector was a diddler, and the original collection a
diddle.

And here, too, is a somewhat similar thing. A steamboat is casting
loose from the wharf. A traveller, portmanteau in hand, is discovered
running toward the wharf, at full speed. Suddenly, he makes a dead
halt, stoops, and picks up something from the ground in a very
agitated manner. It is a pocket-book, and — “Has any gentleman lost
a pocketbook?” he cries. No one can say that he has exactly lost a
pocket-book; but a great excitement ensues, when the treasure trove
is found to be of value. The boat, however, must not be detained.

“Time and tide wait for no man,” says the captain.

“For God’s sake, stay only a few minutes,” says the finder of the
book — “the true claimant will presently appear.”

“Can’t wait!” replies the man in authority; “cast off there, d’ye
hear?”

“What am I to do?” asks the finder, in great tribulation. “I am about
to leave the country for some years, and I cannot conscientiously
retain this large amount in my possession. I beg your pardon, sir,”
[here he addresses a gentleman on shore,] “but you have the air of an
honest man. Will you confer upon me the favor of taking charge of
this pocket-book — I know I can trust you — and of advertising it?
The notes, you see, amount to a very considerable sum. The owner
will, no doubt, insist upon rewarding you for your trouble-

“Me! — no, you! — it was you who found the book.”

“Well, if you must have it so — I will take a small reward — just
to satisfy your scruples. Let me see — why these notes are all
hundreds- bless my soul! a hundred is too much to take — fifty would
be quite enough, I am sure-

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“But then I have no change for a hundred, and upon the whole, you had
better-

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“Never mind!” cries the gentleman on shore, who has been examining
his own pocket-book for the last minute or so — “never mind! I can
fix it — here is a fifty on the Bank of North America — throw the
book.”

And the over-conscientious finder takes the fifty with marked
reluctance, and throws the gentleman the book, as desired, while the
steamboat fumes and fizzes on her way. In about half an hour after
her departure, the “large amount” is seen to be a “counterfeit
presentment,” and the whole thing a capital diddle.

A bold diddle is this. A camp-meeting, or something similar, is to be
held at a certain spot which is accessible only by means of a free
bridge. A diddler stations himself upon this bridge, respectfully
informs all passers by of the new county law, which establishes a
toll of one cent for foot passengers, two for horses and donkeys, and
so forth, and so forth. Some grumble but all submit, and the diddler
goes home a wealthier man by some fifty or sixty dollars well earned.
This taking a toll from a great crowd of people is an excessively
troublesome thing.

A neat diddle is this. A friend holds one of the diddler’s promises
to pay, filled up and signed in due form, upon the ordinary blanks
printed in red ink. The diddler purchases one or two dozen of these
blanks, and every day dips one of them in his soup, makes his dog
jump for it, and finally gives it to him as a bonne bouche. The note
arriving at maturity, the diddler, with the diddler’s dog, calls upon
the friend, and the promise to pay is made the topic of discussion.
The friend produces it from his escritoire, and is in the act of
reaching it to the diddler, when up jumps the diddler’s dog and
devours it forthwith. The diddler is not only surprised but vexed and
incensed at the absurd behavior of his dog, and expresses his entire
readiness to cancel the obligation at any moment when the evidence of
the obligation shall be forthcoming.

A very mean diddle is this. A lady is insulted in the street by a
diddler’s accomplice. The diddler himself flies to her assistance,
and, giving his friend a comfortable thrashing, insists upon
attending the lady to her own door. He bows, with his hand upon his
heart, and most respectfully bids her adieu. She entreats him, as her
deliverer, to walk in and be introduced to her big brother and her
papa. With a sigh, he declines to do so. “Is there no way, then,
sir,” she murmurs, “in which I may be permitted to testify my
gratitude?”

“Why, yes, madam, there is. Will you be kind enough to lend me a
couple of shillings?”

In the first excitement of the moment the lady decides upon fainting
outright. Upon second thought, however, she opens her purse-strings
and delivers the specie. Now this, I say, is a diddle minute — for
one entire moiety of the sum borrowed has to be paid to the gentleman
who had the trouble of performing the insult, and who had then to
stand still and be thrashed for performing it.

Rather a small but still a scientific diddle is this. The diddler
approaches the bar of a tavern, and demands a couple of twists of
tobacco. These are handed to him, when, having slightly examined
them, he says:

“I don’t much like this tobacco. Here, take it back, and give me a
glass of brandy and water in its place.” The brandy and water is
furnished and imbibed, and the diddler makes his way to the door. But
the voice of the tavern-keeper arrests him.

“I believe, sir, you have forgotten to pay for your brandy and
water.”

“Pay for my brandy and water! — didn’t I give you the tobacco for
the brandy and water? What more would you have?”

“But, sir, if you please, I don’t remember that you paid me for the
tobacco.”

“What do you mean by that, you scoundrel? — Didn’t I give you back
your tobacco? Isn’t that your tobacco lying there? Do you expect me
to pay for what I did not take?”

“But, sir,” says the publican, now rather at a loss what to say, “but
sir-”

“But me no buts, sir,” interrupts the diddler, apparently in very
high dudgeon, and slamming the door after him, as he makes his
escape. — “But me no buts, sir, and none of your tricks upon
travellers.”

Here again is a very clever diddle, of which the simplicity is not
its least recommendation. A purse, or pocket-book, being really lost,
the loser inserts in one of the daily papers of a large city a fully
descriptive advertisement.

Whereupon our diddler copies the facts of this advertisement, with a
change of heading, of general phraseology and address. The original,
for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed “A Pocket-Book Lost!”
and requires the treasure, when found, to be left at No. 1 Tom
Street. The copy is brief, and being headed with “Lost” only,
indicates No. 2 Dick, or No. 3 Harry Street, as the locality at which
the owner may be seen. Moreover, it is inserted in at least five or
six of the daily papers of the day, while in point of time, it makes
its appearance only a few hours after the original. Should it be read
by the loser of the purse, he would hardly suspect it to have any
reference to his own misfortune. But, of course, the chances are five
or six to one, that the finder will repair to the address given by
the diddler, rather than to that pointed out by the rightful
proprietor. The former pays the reward, pockets the treasure and
decamps.

Quite an analogous diddle is this. A lady of ton has dropped, some
where in the street, a diamond ring of very unusual value. For its
recovery, she offers some forty or fifty dollars reward — giving, in
her advertisement, a very minute description of the gem, and of its
settings, and declaring that, on its restoration at No. so and so, in
such and such Avenue, the reward would be paid instanter, without a
single question being asked. During the lady’s absence from home, a
day or two afterwards, a ring is heard at the door of No. so and so,
in such and such Avenue; a servant appears; the lady of the house is
asked for and is declared to be out, at which astounding information,
the visitor expresses the most poignant regret. His business is of
importance and concerns the lady herself. In fact, he had the good
fortune to find her diamond ring. But perhaps it would be as well
that he should call again. “By no means!” says the servant; and “By
no means!” says the lady’s sister and the lady’s sister-in-law, who
are summoned forthwith. The ring is clamorously identified, the
reward is paid, and the finder nearly thrust out of doors. The lady
returns and expresses some little dissatisfaction with her sister and
sister-in-law, because they happen to have paid forty or fifty
dollars for a fac-simile of her diamond ring — a fac-simile made out
of real pinch-beck and unquestionable paste.

But as there is really no end to diddling, so there would be none to
this essay, were I even to hint at half the variations, or
inflections, of which this science is susceptible. I must bring this
paper, perforce, to a conclusion, and this I cannot do better than by
a summary notice of a very decent, but rather elaborate diddle, of
which our own city was made the theatre, not very long ago, and which
was subsequently repeated with success, in other still more verdant
localities of the Union. A middle-aged gentleman arrives in town from
parts unknown. He is remarkably precise, cautious, staid, and
deliberate in his demeanor. His dress is scrupulously neat, but
plain, unostentatious. He wears a white cravat, an ample waistcoat,
made with an eye to comfort alone; thick-soled cosy-looking shoes,
and pantaloons without straps. He has the whole air, in fact, of your
well-to-do, sober-sided, exact, and respectable “man of business,”
Par excellence — one of the stern and outwardly hard, internally
soft, sort of people that we see in the crack high comedies –
fellows whose words are so many bonds, and who are noted for giving
away guineas, in charity, with the one hand, while, in the way of
mere bargain, they exact the uttermost fraction of a farthing with
the other.

He makes much ado before he can get suited with a boarding house. He
dislikes children. He has been accustomed to quiet. His habits are
methodical — and then he would prefer getting into a private and
respectable small family, piously inclined. Terms, however, are no
object — only he must insist upon settling his bill on the first of
every month, (it is now the second) and begs his landlady, when he
finally obtains one to his mind, not on any account to forget his
instructions upon this point — but to send in a bill, and receipt,
precisely at ten o’clock, on the first day of every month, and under
no circumstances to put it off to the second.

These arrangements made, our man of business rents an office in a
reputable rather than a fashionable quarter of the town. There is
nothing he more despises than pretense. “Where there is much show,”
he says, “there is seldom any thing very solid behind” — an
observation which so profoundly impresses his landlady’s fancy, that
she makes a pencil memorandum of it forthwith, in her great family
Bible, on the broad margin of the Proverbs of Solomon.

The next step is to advertise, after some such fashion as this, in
the principal business six-pennies of the city — the pennies are
eschewed as not “respectable” — and as demanding payment for all
advertisements in advance. Our man of business holds it as a point of
his faith that work should never be paid for until done.

“WANTED — The advertisers, being about to commence extensive
business operations in this city, will require the services of three
or four intelligent and competent clerks, to whom a liberal salary
will be paid. The very best recommendations, not so much for
capacity, as for integrity, will be expected. Indeed, as the duties
to be performed involve high responsibilities, and large amounts of
money must necessarily pass through the hands of those engaged, it is
deemed advisable to demand a deposit of fifty dollars from each clerk
employed. No person need apply, therefore, who is not prepared to
leave this sum in the possession of the advertisers, and who cannot
furnish the most satisfactory testimonials of morality. Young
gentlemen piously inclined will be preferred. Application should be
made between the hours of ten and eleven A. M., and four and five P.
M., of Messrs.

“Bogs, Hogs Logs, Frogs & Co.,

“No. 110 Dog Street”

By the thirty-first day of the month, this advertisement has brought
to the office of Messrs. Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs, and Company, some
fifteen or twenty young gentlemen piously inclined. But our man of
business is in no hurry to conclude a contract with any — no man of
business is ever precipitate — and it is not until the most rigid
catechism in respect to the piety of each young gentleman’s
inclination, that his services are engaged and his fifty dollars
receipted for, just by way of proper precaution, on the part of the
respectable firm of Bogs, Hogs, Logs, Frogs, and Company. On the
morning of the first day of the next month, the landlady does not
present her bill, according to promise — a piece of neglect for
which the comfortable head of the house ending in ogs would no doubt
have chided her severely, could he have been prevailed upon to remain
in town a day or two for that purpose.

As it is, the constables have had a sad time of it, running hither
and thither, and all they can do is to declare the man of business
most emphatically, a “hen knee high” — by which some persons imagine
them to imply that, in fact, he is n. e. i. — by which again the
very classical phrase non est inventus, is supposed to be understood.
In the meantime the young gentlemen, one and all, are somewhat less
piously inclined than before, while the landlady purchases a
shilling’s worth of the Indian rubber, and very carefully obliterates
the pencil memorandum that some fool has made in her great family
Bible, on the broad margin of the Proverbs of Solomon.

The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut.
The azure fields of Heaven were ’sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light.
The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew.
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.
Giles Fletcher.

FROM his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend
Ellison along. Nor do I use the word prosperity in its mere worldly
sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I
speak seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of
Turgot, Price, Priestley, and Condorcet — of exemplifying by
individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the
perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I fancy that I have
seen refuted the dogma, that in man’s very nature lies some hidden
principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his
career has given me to understand that in general, from the violation
of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind
– that as a species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought
elements of content — and that, even now, in the present darkness
and madness of all thought on the great question of the social
condition, it is not impossible that man, the individual, under
certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued,
and thus it is worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment
which distinguished his life was, in great measure, the result of
preconcert. It is indeed evident that with less of the instinctive
philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of
experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the
very extraordinary success of his life, into the common vortex of
unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-eminent endowments. But it
is by no means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of
my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four
elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss. That
which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely
physical one of free exercise in the open air. “The health,” he said,
“attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name.” He instanced
the ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the
earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered
happier than others. His second condition was the love of woman. His
third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of
ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held
that, other things being equal, the extent of attainable happiness
was in proportion to the spirituality of this object.

Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts
lavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace and beauty he
exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which the
acquisition of knowledge is less a labor than an intuition and a
necessity. His family was one of the most illustrious of the empire.
His bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. His
possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of his
majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of
fate had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social
world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the
moral constitution of those who are their objects.

It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison’s coming of
age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison.
This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no
immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to
accumulate for a century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously
directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the
aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name of
Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years. Many
attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex
post facto character rendered them abortive; but the attention of a
jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally
obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act, however,
did not prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his
twenty-first birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a
fortune of four hundred and fifty millions of dollars.

When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited,
there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its
disposal. The magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum
bewildered all who thought on the topic. The possessor of any
appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform any
one of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any
citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme
excess in the fashionable extravagances of his time — or busying
himself with political intrigue — or aiming at ministerial power –
or purchasing increase of nobility — or collecting large museums of
virtu — or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of
art — or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive
institutions of charity. But for the inconceivable wealth in the
actual possession of the heir, these objects and all ordinary objects
were felt to afford too limited a field. Recourse was had to figures,
and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three
per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less
than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which was
one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or
thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one
thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty
dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of
supposition was thoroughly broken up. Men knew not what to imagine.
There were some who even conceived that Mr. Ellison would divest
himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as of utterly
superfluous opulence — enriching whole troops of his relatives by
division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in
fact, abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the
inheritance.

I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up
his mind on a point which had occasioned so much discussion to his
friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision.
In regard to individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In
the possibility of any improvement, properly so called, being
effected by man himself in the general condition of man, he had (I am
sorry to confess it) little faith. Upon the whole, whether happily or
unhappily, he was thrown back, in very great measure, upon self.

In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended,
moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty
and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole
proper satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in
the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some peculiarities, either in
his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged
with what is termed materialism all his ethical speculations; and it
was this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most
advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field for the
poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely
physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither musician nor
poet — if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or
it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in
pursuance of his idea that in contempt of ambition is to be found one
of the essential principles of happiness on earth. Is it not indeed,
possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious,
the highest is above that which is termed ambition? And may it not
thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly
remained “mute and inglorious?” I believe that the world has never
seen — and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the
noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never
see — that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer
domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.

Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more
profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances
than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would
have become a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously
poetical was too limited in its extent and consequences, to have
occupied, at any time, much of his attention. And I have now
mentioned all the provinces in which the common understanding of the
poetic sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating. But Ellison
maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not
altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably
neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of
the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the
landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of
opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of
imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the
elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the
most glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and
multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most
direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in
the direction or concentration of this effort — or, more properly,
in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth — he
perceived that he should be employing the best means — laboring to
the greatest advantage — in the fulfilment, not only of his own
destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had
implanted the poetic sentiment in man.

“Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth.” In his
explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solving
what has always seemed to me an enigma: — I mean the fact (which
none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery
exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce. No such
paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of
Claude. In the most enchanting of natural landscapes, there will
always be found a defect or an excess — many excesses and defects.
While the component parts may defy, individually, the highest skill
of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be
susceptible of improvement. In short, no position can be attained on
the wide surface of the natural earth, from which an artistical eye,
looking steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed
the “composition” of the landscape. And yet how unintelligible is
this! In all other matters we are justly instructed to regard nature
as supreme. With her details we shrink from competition. Who shall
presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to improve the
proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says, of
sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or
idealized rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or
sculptural combinations of points of human liveliness do more than
approach the living and breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the
principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is
but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to
pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say,
felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or chimera.
The mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the
sentiments of his art yields the artist. He not only believes, but
positively knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary
arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute the true
beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been matured into
expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the world
has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he
is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his
brethren. Let a “composition” be defective; let an emendation be
wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be
submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be
admitted. And even far more than this: — in remedy of the defective
composition, each insulated member of the fraternity would have
suggested the identical emendation.

I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature
susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility of
improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to
solve. My own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the
primitive intention of nature would have so arranged the earth’s
surface as to have fulfilled at all points man’s sense of perfection
in the beautiful, the sublime, or the picturesque; but that this
primitive intention had been frustrated by the known geological
disturbances — disturbances of form and color — grouping, in the
correction or allaying of which lies the soul of art. The force of
this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it
involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to
any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic
of death. He thus explained: — Admit the earthly immortality of man
to have been the first intention. We have then the primitive
arrangement of the earth’s surface adapted to his blissful estate, as
not existent but designed. The disturbances were the preparations for
his subsequently conceived deathful condition.

“Now,” said my friend, “what we regard as exaltation of the landscape
may be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of
view. Each alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a
blemish in the picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at
large — in mass — from some point distant from the earth’s surface,
although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily
understood that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, may
at the same time injure a general or more distantly observed effect.
There may be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to
humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order — our
unpicturesqueness picturesque, in a word, the earth-angels, for whose
scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death — refined
appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God the
wide landscape-gardens of the hemispheres.”

In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a
writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well
treated his theme:

“There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the
natural and the artificial. One seeks to recall the original beauty
of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery,
cultivating trees in harmony with the hills or plain of the
neighboring land; detecting and bringing into practice those nice
relations of size, proportion, and color which, hid from the common
observer, are revealed everywhere to the experienced student of
nature. The result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather
in the absence of all defects and incongruities — in the prevalence
of a healthy harmony and order — than in the creation of any special
wonders or miracles. The artificial style has as many varieties as
there are different tastes to gratify. It has a certain general
relation to the various styles of building. There are the stately
avenues and retirements of Versailles; Italian terraces; and a
various mixed old English style, which bears some relation to the
domestic Gothic or English Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may be
said against the abuses of the artificial landscape — gardening, a
mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This
is partly pleasing to the eye, by the show of order and design, and
partly moral. A terrace, with an old moss — covered balustrade,
calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in
other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an evidence of care
and human interest.”

“From what I have already observed,” said Ellison, “you will
understand that I reject the idea, here expressed, of recalling the
original beauty of the country. The original beauty is never so great
as that which may be introduced. Of course, every thing depends on
the selection of a spot with capabilities. What is said about
detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of size,
proportion, and color, is one of those mere vaguenesses of speech
which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The phrase quoted may mean
any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result
of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of
all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special
wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the grovelling
apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of
genius. The negative merit suggested appertains to that hobbling
criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison into apotheosis.
In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of
vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus be
circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation,
can be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the
merits of denial — to the excellencies which refrain. Beyond these,
the critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build a
“Cato,” but we are in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an
“Inferno.” The thing done, however; the wonder accomplished; and the
capacity for apprehension becomes universal. The sophists of the
negative school who, through inability to create, have scoffed at
creation, are now found the loudest in applause. What, in its
chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason,
never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration
from their instinct of beauty.

“The author’s observations on the artificial style,” continued
Ellison, “are less objectionable. A mixture of pure art in a garden
scene adds to it a great beauty. This is just; as also is the
reference to the sense of human interest. The principle expressed is
incontrovertible — but there may be something beyond it. There may
be an object in keeping with the principle — an object unattainable
by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if
attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing
that which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet,
having very unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the
necessary idea of art or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of
interest, so imbue his designs at once with extent and novelty of
beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will
be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the
advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of the
harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of
wildernesses — in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature –
there is apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to
reflection only; in no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling.
Now let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to be one step
depressed — to be brought into something like harmony or consistency
with the sense of human art — to form an intermedium between the
two: — let us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined
vastness and definitiveness — whose united beauty, magnificence, and
strangeness, shall convey the idea of care, or culture, or
superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanity
– then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art
intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary
nature — a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but
which still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels
that hover between man and God.”

It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision
such as this — in the free exercise in the open air ensured by the
personal superintendence of his plans — in the unceasing object
which these plans afforded — in the high spirituality of the object
– in the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feel –
in the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility
of satiating, that one master passion of his soul, the thirst for
beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly,
whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple
atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found,
exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater
amount of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams
of De Stael.

I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the
marvels which my friend did actually accomplish. I wish to describe,
but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate
between detail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to
unite the two in their extremes.

Mr. Ellison’s first step regarded, of course, the choice of a
locality, and scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when
the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention.
In fact, he had made up his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when
a night’s reflection induced him to abandon the idea. “Were I
misanthropic,” he said, “such a locale would suit me. The
thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the difficulty of
ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as
yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of
solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent
and duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I
shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have done. Let
me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous city — whose vicinity,
also, will best enable me to execute my plans.”

In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for
several years, and I was permitted to accompany him. A thousand spots
with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for
reasons which satisfied me, in the end, that he was right. We came at
length to an elevated table-land of wonderful fertility and beauty,
affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that
of Aetna, and, in Ellison’s opinion as well as my own, surpassing the
far-famed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the
picturesque.

“I am aware,” said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight
after gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, “I know
that here, in my circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of
men would rest content. This panorama is indeed glorious, and I
should rejoice in it but for the excess of its glory. The taste of
all the architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of
‘prospect,’ to put up buildings on hill-tops. The error is obvious.
Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent,
startles, excites — and then fatigues, depresses. For the occasional
scene nothing can be better — for the constant view nothing worse.
And, in the constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur
is that of extent; the worst phase of extent, that of distance. It is
at war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusion — the
sentiment and sense which we seek to humor in ‘retiring to the
country.’ In looking from the summit of a mountain we cannot help
feeling abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distant prospects
as a pestilence.”

It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search
that we found a locality with which Ellison professed himself
satisfied. It is, of course, needless to say where was the locality.
The late death of my friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open
to certain classes of visiters, has given to Arnheim a species of
secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although
infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long distinguished
Fonthill.

The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visiter left the
city in the early morning. During the forenoon he passed between
shores of a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable
sheep, their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling
meadows. By degrees the idea of cultivation subsided into that of
merely pastoral care. This slowly became merged in a sense of
retirement — this again in a consciousness of solitude. As the
evening approached, the channel grew more narrow, the banks more and
more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in rich, more
profuse, and more sombre foliage. The water increased in
transparency. The stream took a thousand turns, so that at no moment
could its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distance than a
furlong. At every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an
enchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of
foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no floor — the keel
balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark
which, by some accident having been turned upside down, floated in
constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of
sustaining it. The channel now became a gorge — although the term is
somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because the language
has no word which better represents the most striking — not the most
distinctive-feature of the scene. The character of gorge was
maintained only in the height and parallelism of the shores; it was
lost altogether in their other traits. The walls of the ravine
(through which the clear water still tranquilly flowed) arose to an
elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet,
and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great measure, to
shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which
depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the
whole chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more
frequent and intricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon
themselves, so that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction.
He was, moreover, enwrapt in an exquisite sense of the strange. The
thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have
undergone modification, there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling
uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not a dead branch
– not a withered leaf — not a stray pebble — not a patch of the
brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against
the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of
outline that delighted while it bewildered the eye.

Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom
deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel
brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin
of very considerable extent when compared with the width of the
gorge. It was about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all
points but one — that immediately fronting the vessel as it entered
– by hills equal in general height to the walls of the chasm,
although of a thoroughly different character. Their sides sloped from
the water’s edge at an angle of some forty-five degrees, and they
were clothed from base to summit — not a perceptible point escaping
– in a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-blossoms; scarcely a
green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuating
color. This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the
water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of
small round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by glimpses –
that is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far
down in the inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On
these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of any size. The
impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth,
color, quietude, uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness,
voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that
suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful,
magnificent, and fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the
myriad-tinted slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its
vague termination amid the folds of overhanging cloud, it became,
indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic cataract of rubies,
sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling silently out of the sky.

The visiter, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of
the ravine, is delighted but astounded by the full orb of the
declining sun, which he had supposed to be already far below the
horizon, but which now confronts him, and forms the sole termination
of an otherwise limitless vista seen through another chasm — like
rift in the hills.

But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and
descends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices
in vivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this
boat arise high above the water, with sharp points, so that the
general form is that of an irregular crescent. It lies on the surface
of the bay with the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined floor
reposes a single feathery paddle of satin-wood; but no oarsmen or
attendant is to be seen. The guest is bidden to be of good cheer –
that the fates will take care of him. The larger vessel disappears,
and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies apparently motionless
in the middle of the lake. While he considers what course to pursue,
however, he becomes aware of a gentle movement in the fairy bark. It
slowly swings itself around until its prow points toward the sun. It
advances with a gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the
slight ripples it creates seem to break about the ivory side in
divinest melody-seem to offer the only possible explanation of the
soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin the bewildered
voyager looks around him in vain.

The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is
approached, so that its depths can be more distinctly seen. To the
right arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It
is observed, however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the
bank dips into the water, still prevails. There is not one token of
the usual river debris. To the left the character of the scene is
softer and more obviously artificial. Here the bank slopes upward
from the stream in a very gentle ascent, forming a broad sward of
grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a
brilliancy of green which would bear comparison with the tint of the
purest emerald. This plateau varies in width from ten to three
hundred yards; reaching from the river-bank to a wall, fifty feet
high, which extends, in an infinity of curves, but following the
general direction of the river, until lost in the distance to the
westward. This wall is of one continuous rock, and has been formed by
cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream’s
southern bank, but no trace of the labor has been suffered to remain.
The chiselled stone has the hue of ages, and is profusely overhung
and overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine,
and the clematis. The uniformity of the top and bottom lines of the
wall is fully relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height,
growing singly or in small groups, both along the plateau and in the
domain behind the wall, but in close proximity to it; so that
frequent limbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip
their pendent extremities into the water. Farther back within the
domain, the vision is impeded by an impenetrable screen of foliage.

These things are observed during the canoe’s gradual approach to what
I have called the gate of the vista. On drawing nearer to this,
however, its chasm-like appearance vanishes; a new outlet from the
bay is discovered to the left — in which direction the wall is also
seen to sweep, still following the general course of the stream. Down
this new opening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the stream,
accompanied by the wall, still bends to the left, until both are
swallowed up by the leaves.

The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel;
and here the shore opposite the wall is found to resemble that
opposite the wall in the straight vista. Lofty hills, rising
occasionally into mountains, and covered with vegetation in wild
luxuriance, still shut in the scene.

Floating gently onward, but with a velocity slightly augmented, the
voyager, after many short turns, finds his progress apparently barred
by a gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold, elaborately
carved and fretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now
fast-sinking sun with an effulgence that seems to wreath the whole
surrounding forest in flames. This gate is inserted in the lofty
wall; which here appears to cross the river at right angles. In a few
moments, however, it is seen that the main body of the water still
sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall
following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume,
diverging from the principal one, makes its way, with a slight
ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from sight. The canoe
falls into the lesser channel and approaches the gate. Its ponderous
wings are slowly and musically expanded. The boat glides between
them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre entirely
begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a gleaming
river throughout the full extent of their circuit. Meantime the whole
Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gush of
entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet
odor, — there is a dream — like intermingling to the eye of tall
slender Eastern trees — bosky shrubberies — flocks of golden and
crimson birds — lily-fringed lakes — meadows of violets, tulips,
poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses — long intertangled lines of
silver streamlets — and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a
mass of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself by
miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred
oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork,
conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the
Gnomes.