links, a huge censer of the same metal, Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived
that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-
coloured fires.
Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about; and there
was the couch, toothe bridal couchof an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with
a pall-like canopy above. In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus
of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial
sculpture. But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief fantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic
in heighteven unproportionably sowere hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and
massive-lookingtapestrytapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a
covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes
of the curtains which partially shaded the window. The material was the richest cloth of gold. It was
spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought
upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But these figures partook of the true character of the
arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed
traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect. To one entering
the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance
gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself
surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman,
or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the
artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies giving a hideous and
uneasy animation to the whole.
In halls such as thesein a bridal chamber such as thisI passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed
hours of the first month of our marriage passed them with but little disquietude. That my wife dreaded
the fierce moodiness of my temperthat she shunned me, and loved me but littleI could not help
perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more
to demon than to man. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved,
the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I revelled in recollections of her purity; of her wisdom; of her
lofty, her ethereal nature; of her passionate, her idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely
burn with more than all the fires of her own. In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually
fettered in the shackles of the drug) I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or
among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion,
the consuming ardour of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she had abandonedah,
could it be for ever?upon the earth.
About the commencement of the second month of the marriage, the Lady Rowena was attacked with
sudden illness, from which her recovery was slow. The fever which consumed her rendered her nights
uneasy; and in her perturbed state of half-slumber, she spoke of sounds, and of motions, in and about
the chamber of the turret, which I concluded had no origin save in the distemper of her fancy, or perhaps
in the phantasmagoric influences of the chamber itself. She became at length convalescentfinally,
well. Yet but a brief period elapsed ere a second more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of
suffering; and from this attack her frame, at all times feeble, never altogether recovered. Her illnesses
were, after this epoch, of alarming character, and of more alarming recurrence, defying alike the knowledge
and the great exertions of her physicians. With the increase of the chronic disease, which had thus,
apparently, taken too sure hold upon her constitution to be eradicated by human means, I could not fail
to observe a similar increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial
causes of fear. She spoke again, and now more frequently and pertinaciously, of the soundsof the
slight soundsand of the unusual motions among the tapestries, to which she had formerly alluded.
One night, near the closing in of September, she pressed this distressing subject with more than usual
emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching,
with feelings half of anxiety, half of vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. I sat by |