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. 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 be 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.