Of
      Mademoiselle Salle it has been well said, “_Que tous ses pas
      etaient des sentiments_,” and of Berenice I more seriously
      believed _que toutes ses dents etaient des idées_. _Des
      idées!_—ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! _Des
      idées!_—ah, _therefore_ it was that I coveted them so madly! I
      felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace,
      in giving me back to reason. And the evening closed in upon me thus—and then the darkness
      came, and tarried, and went—and the day again dawned—and the
      mists of a second night were now gathering around—and still I sat
      motionless in that solitary room—and still I sat buried in
      meditation—and still the _phantasma_ of the teeth maintained its
      terrible ascendancy, as, with the most vivid hideous
      distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and
      shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a
      cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause,
      succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many
      low moanings of sorrow or of pain. I arose from my seat, and
      throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out
      in the ante-chamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me
      that Berenice was—no more! She had been seized with epilepsy in
      the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the
      grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the
      burial were completed. I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there
      alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and
      exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well
      aware, that since the setting of the sun, Berenice had been
      interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no
      positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was
      replete with horror—horror more horrible from being vague, and
      terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the
      record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and
      unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in
      vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound,
      the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be
      ringing in my ears. I had done a deed—what was it? I asked myself
      the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber
      answered me,—“_What was it?_”

      On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little
      box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it
      frequently before, for it was the property of the family
      physician; but how came it _there_, upon my table, and why did I
      shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be
      accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of
      a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the
      singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat:—“_Dicebant mihi
      sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum
      fore levatas_.” Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my
      head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become
      congealed within my veins? There came a light tap at the library door—and, pale as the
      tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were
      wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky,
      and very low. What said he?—some broken sentences I heard. He
      told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night—of the
      gathering together of the household—of a search in the direction
      of the sound; and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he
      whispered me of a violated grave—of a disfigured body enshrouded,
      yet still breathing—still palpitating—_still alive_! He pointed to garments;—they were muddy and clotted with gore. I
      spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand: it was indented
      with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some
      object against the wall. I looked at it for some minutes: it was
      a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the
      box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my
      tremor, it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst
      into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out
      some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two
      small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to
      and fro about the floor. ELEONORA


     Sub conservatione formæ specificæ salva anima. —_Raymond Lully_. I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of
      passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet
      settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest
      intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is
      profound—does not spring from disease of thought—from moods of
      mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who
      dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who
      dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses
      of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have
      been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn
      something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere
      knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless
      or compassless into the vast ocean of the “light ineffable,” and
      again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, “agressi
      sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi.”

      We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there
      are two distinct conditions of my mental existence—the condition
      of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the
      memory of events forming the first epoch of my life—and a
      condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and
      to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of
      my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier period,
      believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only
      such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if doubt
      it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus. She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and
      distinctly these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only
      sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my
      cousin. We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun,
      in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep
      ever came upon that vale; for it lay away up among a range of
      giant hills that hung beetling around about it, shutting out the
      sunlight from its sweetest recesses.