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
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.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
======
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.
[_Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to he erected upon the
site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris_.]
I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses
were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was
the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that,
the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy
indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution --
perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel.
This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for
a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips
of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than
the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to
grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of
firmness -- of immoveable resolution -- of stern contempt of human
torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still
issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I
saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no
sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror,
the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which
enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon
the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect
of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me;
but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my
spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched
the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became
meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them
there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a
rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in
the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at
length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges
vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into
nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness
supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing
descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night
were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was
lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even
to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In
delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! even in the grave
all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from
the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some
dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been)
we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the
swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or
spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It
seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could
recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions
eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is -- what?
How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb?
But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are
not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come
unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned,
is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in
coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad
visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the
Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe Page 58