For weeks, for months, I pondered
      upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes,
      because their accomplishment involved a _chance_ of detection. At
      length, in reading some French memoirs, I found an account of a
      nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the
      agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my
      fancy at once. I knew my victim’s habit of reading in bed. I
      knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But
      I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe
      the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room
      candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which I
      there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed,
      and the coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”

      Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The
      idea of detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of
      the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no
      shadow of a clew by which it would be possible to convict, or
      even to suspect me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a
      sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon
      my absolute security. For a very long period of time I was
      accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real
      delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my
      sin. But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the
      pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations,
      into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed because it
      haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is
      quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our
      ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary
      song, or some unimpressive snatches from an opera. Nor will we be
      the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera
      air meritorious. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually
      catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a low
      undertone, the phrase, “I am safe.”

      One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself
      in the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance, I remodelled them thus: “I am safe—I am
      safe—yes—if I be not fool enough to make open confession!”

      No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill
      creep to my heart. I had had some experience in these fits of
      perversity (whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain),
      and I remembered well that in no instance I had successfully
      resisted their attacks. And now my own casual self-suggestion
      that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of
      which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of
      him whom I had murdered—and beckoned me on to death. At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the
      soul. I walked vigorously—faster—still faster—at length I ran. I
      felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of
      thought overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too
      well understood that to think, in my situation, was to be lost. I
      still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the
      crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm,
      and pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I
      have torn out my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice
      resounded in my ears—a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I
      turned—I gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the
      pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and giddy; and
      then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad
      palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth from
      my soul. They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with
      marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of
      interruption before concluding the brief but pregnant sentences
      that consigned me to the hangman and to hell. Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial
      conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon. But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am
      _here!_ To-morrow I shall be fetterless!—_but where?_




THE ISLAND OF THE FAY


Nullus enim locus sine genio est.—_Servius_. “La musique,” says Marmontel, in those “Contes Moraux” (*1) which
      in all our translations, we have insisted upon calling “Moral
      Tales,” as if in mockery of their spirit—“la musique est le seul
      des talents qui jouissent de lui-même; tous les autres veulent
      des temoins.” He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet
      sounds with the capacity for creating them. No more than any
      other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete
      enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its
      exercise. And it is only in common with other talents that it
      produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea
      which the raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or
      has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point,
      is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of
      music is the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively
      alone. The proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by
      those who love the lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual
      uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen
      mortality and perhaps only one—which owes even more than does
      music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean the
      happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In
      truth, the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon
      earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the
      presence—not of human life only, but of life in any other form
      than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are
      voiceless—is a stain upon the landscape—is at war with the genius
      of the scene.