T H E FA L L O F T H E H O U S E

OF USHER
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.
De Béranger.1

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn
of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens,
I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly
dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades
of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of
Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the
building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say
insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-
pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usu-
ally receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or
terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house,
and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak
walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank
sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensa-
tion more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon
opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping
off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the
heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of
the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was
it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the con-
templation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble;
nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon
me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory
conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of
very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting

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us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations be-
yond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different
arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the
picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its
capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I
reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn
that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but
with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remod-
elled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-
stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to my-
self a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had
been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years
had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately
reached me in a distant part of the country—a letter from him—
which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other
than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation.
The writer spoke of acute bodily illness—of a mental disorder
which oppressed him—and of an earnest desire to see me, as his
best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempt-
ing, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his mal-
ady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was
said—it was the apparent heart that went with his request—which
allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed
forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I
really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always exces-
sive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient fam-
ily had been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of
temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works
of exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munif-
icent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to
the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily
recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the
very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-
honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring
branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line
of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary
variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running
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over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the prem-

ises with the accredited character of the people, and while specu-
lating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse
of centuries, might have exercised upon the other—it was this de-
ficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviat-
ing transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the
name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the
original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation
of the “House of Usher”—an appellation which seemed to in-
clude, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family
and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish
experiment—that of looking down within the tarn—had been to
deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the
consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition—for why
should I not so term it?—served mainly to accelerate the increase it-
self. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all senti-
ments having terror as a basis. And it might have been for this
reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself,
from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy—
a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid
force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon
my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion
and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and
their immediate vicinity—an atmosphere which had no affinity
with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed
trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a pestilent and mystic
vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I
scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its princi-
pal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discol-
oration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole
exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet
all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion
of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild incon-
sistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crum-
bling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much
that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which
has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance
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from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of ex-
tensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.
Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a
barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the
building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direc-
tion, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house.
A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic arch-
way of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in
silence, through many dark and intricate passages in my progress
to the studio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way
contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of
which I have already spoken. While the objects around me—while
the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the
ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial tro-
phies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to
such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I
hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still
wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary
images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physi-
cian of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled ex-
pression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with
trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and
ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance
from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from
within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through
the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the
more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain
to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the
vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls.
The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tat-
tered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about,
but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an
atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom
hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had
been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth
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which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—

of the constrained effort of the ennuyé man of the world. A glance,
however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincer-
ity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I
gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely,
man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as
had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring my-
self to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the
companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had
been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an
eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips some-
what thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a
nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril
unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in
its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more
than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordi-
nate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up alto-
gether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the
mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features,
and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of
change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor
of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all
things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been
suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer tex-
ture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even
with effort, connect its Arabesque expression with any idea of
simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an
incoherence—an inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from
a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual
trepidancy—an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this
nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by
reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced
from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His ac-
tion was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly
from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly
in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt,
weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—that leaden,
self-balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which
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may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of

opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest
desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him.
He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the na-
ture of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family
evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy—a mere ner-
vous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly
soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations.
Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me;
although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narra-
tion had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness
of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could
wear only garments of certain texture; the odors of all flowers
were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and
there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instru-
ments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.
“I shall perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly.
Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of
the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the
thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate
upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhor-
rence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In this
unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will
sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason to-
gether, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, fear.”
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equiv-
ocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He
was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to
the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he
had never ventured forth—in regard to an influence whose sup-
posititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be
re-stated—an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form
and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long suf-
ferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the
physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into
which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon
the morale of his existence.
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He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of

the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to
a more natural and far more palpable origin—to the severe and
long-continued illness—indeed to the evidently approaching
dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister—his sole companion for
long years—his last and only relative on earth. “Her decease,” he
said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave him
(him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the
Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called)
passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, with-
out having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an
utter astonishment not unmingled with dread—and yet I found it
impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor op-
pressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door,
at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and ea-
gerly the countenance of the brother—but he had buried his face in
his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trick-
led many passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of
her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the
person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially
cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she
had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had
not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the
evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother
told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating
power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had ob-
tained of her person would thus probably be the last I should
obtain—that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me
no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either
Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest en-
deavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and
read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisa-
tions of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer in-
timacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his
spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at
cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive
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quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical
universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours
I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I
should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character
of the studies, or of the occupations, in which he involved me, or
led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw
a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring
forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a
certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the
last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elabo-
rate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vague-
nesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I
shuddered knowing not why;—from these paintings (vivid as their
images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to educe
more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of
merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of
his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal
painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least—
in the circumstances then surrounding me—there arose out of the
pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw
upon his canvass, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of
which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing
yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking
not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth,
although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of
an immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls,
smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain acces-
sory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this
excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the
earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and
no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a
flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a
ghastly and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve
which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the excep-
tion of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the
narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar,
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which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his

performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not
be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes,
as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently
accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the re-
sult of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which
I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments
of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhap-
sodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly
impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic cur-
rent of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time,
a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his
lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The
Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
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To a lute’s well-tunéd law,

Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us

into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion
of Usher’s which I mention not so much on account of its novelty,
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(for other men* have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinac-

ity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form,
was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disor-
dered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and
trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorga-
nization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest
abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as
I have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his
forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imag-
ined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones—in the
order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi
which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood
around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this
arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.
Its evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he
said, (and I here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain con-
densation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the
walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet im-
portunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded
the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw
him—what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will
make none.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small
portion of the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be
supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We
pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of
Gresset; the Belphegor of Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of
Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Hol-
berg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of
De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck; and
the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a
small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium, by the Do-
minican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pompo-
nius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Œgipans, over which
Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however,
was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book

*Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff.—See

“Chemical Essays,” vol v. [Poe’s note]
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in quarto Gothic—the manual of a forgotten church—the Vigiliae

Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae.2
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of
its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one eve-
ning, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no
more, he stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fort-
night, (previously to its final interment,) in one of the numerous
vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason,
however, assigned for this singular proceeding, was one which I
did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his
resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual charac-
ter of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager
inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and
exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not
deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the
person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at
the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but
a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrange-
ments for the temporary entombment. The body having been en-
coffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we
placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches,
half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little oppor-
tunity for investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without
means of admission for light; lying, at great depth, immediately
beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleep-
ing apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal
times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days,
as a place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible
substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long
archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed
with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly
protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating
sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within
this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed
lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking
similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my at-
tention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out
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some few words from which I learned that the deceased and him-
self had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible
nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however,
rested not long upon the dead—for we could not regard her un-
awed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the matu-
rity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly
cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the
bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the
lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down
the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with
toil, into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion
of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observ-
able change came over the features of the mental disorder of my
friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupa-
tions were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to
chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of
his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue—
but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once oc-
casional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous
quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utter-
ance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to di-
vulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times,
again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable va-
garies of madness, for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long
hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to
some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition
terrified—that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet im-
pressive superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the
seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within
the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings.
Sleep came not near my couch—while the hours waned and waned
away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had domin-
ion over me. I endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I
felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture
of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured
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into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to

and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations
of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor
gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my
very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off
with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and,
peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber,
harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit
prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,
through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not
whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unac-
countable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I
felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavored
to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had
fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on
an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recog-
nised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a
gentle touch, at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His counte-
nance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was
a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hys-
teria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me—but anything
was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I
even welcomed his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having
stared about him for some moments in silence—“you have not
then seen it?—but, stay! you shall.” Thus speaking, and having
carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and
threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from
our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night,
and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind
had apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were
frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and
the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press
upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the
life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all points
against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say
that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving
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this—yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars—nor was there

any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the
huge masses of agitated vapor, as well as all terrestrial objects im-
mediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a
faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which
hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said I, shudder-
ingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the win-
dow to a seat. “These appearances, which bewilder you, are
merely electrical phenomena not uncommon—or it may be that
they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let
us close this casement;—the air is chilling and dangerous to your
frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read, and you
shall listen;—and so we will pass away this terrible night to-
gether.”
The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist”
of Sir Launcelot Canning;3 but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s
more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its
uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had inter-
est for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, how-
ever, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague
hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac,
might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of simi-
lar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should
read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of
vivacity with which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the
words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the
success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where
Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable
admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good
an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of
the narrative run thus:
“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who
was now mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the
wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with
the hermit, who, in sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn,
but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of
the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made
t h e fa l l o f t h e h o u s e o f u s h e r 141

quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand;
and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and
tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding
wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest.”
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment,
paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that
my excited fancy had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from
some very remote portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly,
to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of char-
acter, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very
cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particu-
larly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which
had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of
the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still in-
creasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which
should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story:
“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the
door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the
maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and
prodigious demeanor, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard
before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall
there hung a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten—

“Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

“And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the
dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with
a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred
had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise
of it, the like whereof was never before heard.”
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild
amazement—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this in-
stance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it pro-
ceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant,
but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating
sound—the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already con-
jured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the ro-
mancer.
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Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this sec-

ond and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand con-
flicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were
predominant, I still retained sufficient presence of mind to avoid
exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my com-
panion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds
in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration had, during
the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a position
fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as
to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could
but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips
trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped
upon his breast—yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide
and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile.
The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this idea—for
he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform
sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narra-
tive of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury
of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the
breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the
carcass from out of the way before him, and approached valor-
ously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was
upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but
fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty great and
terrible ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a
shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a
floor of silver—I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and
clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely un-
nerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement
of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat.
His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole
countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my
hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that
he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if uncon-
scious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank
in the hideous import of his words.
t h e fa l l o f t h e h o u s e o f u s h e r 143

“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—
long—many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet
I dared not—oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared
not—I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I
not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first
feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them—many, many
days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak! And now—
to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—
say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron
hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered arch-
way of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here
anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not
heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy
and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang fu-
riously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort
he were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now
stands without the door!”
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been
found the potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to which
the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their
ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust—
but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and en-
shrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood
upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle
upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she re-
mained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—
then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person
of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,
bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had
anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The
storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing
the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light,
and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued;
for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The ra-
diance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which
now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of
which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the
144 tales

building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure

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