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 damned 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! THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER


     Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
     Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne..

—_De Béranger_. 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 usually 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 sensation 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 contemplation 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 us, still the analysis of this power lies among
      considerations beyond 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 remodelled 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 myself 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 attempting,
      by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his
      malady. 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
      excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very
      ancient family 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 munificent 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.