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[page 167:]
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BERENICE.
 MISERY is
manifold. The
wretchedness
of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow,
its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet
as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow!
How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? —
from
the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a
consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the
memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are
have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. I
have
a tale to tell in its own essence rife with horror — I would suppress
it
were it not a record more of feelings than of facts.
My baptismal name is Egæus —
that of my
family
I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more
time-honored
than my gloomy, gray hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race
of visionaries: and in many striking particulars — in the character of
the family mansion — in the frescos [page 168:] of
the chief saloon — in the tapestries of the dormitories — in the
chiseling
of some buttresses in the armory — but more especially in the gallery
of
antique paintings — in the fashion of the library chamber — and,
lastly,
in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more
than
sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest
years are
connected
with that chamber, and with its volumes — of which latter I will say no
more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness
to
say that I had not lived before — that the soul has no previous
existence.
You deny it — let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself I seek not
to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aërial forms — of
spiritual and meaning eyes — of sounds, musical yet sad — a remembrance
which will not be excluded: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable,
indefinite,
unsteady — and like a shadow too in the impossibility of my getting rid
of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus
awaking from the
long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the
very
regions of fairy land — into a palace of imagination — into the wild
dominions
of monastic thought and erudition — it is not singular that I gazed
around
me with a startled and ardent eye — that I loitered away my boyhood in
books, and dissipated my youth in reverie — but it is singular
that as
years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the
mansion
of my fathers — it is [page 169:] wonderful what
stagnation
there fell upon the springs of my life — wonderful how total an
inversion
took place in the character of my common thoughts. The realities of the
world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas
of the land of dreams became, in turn, — not the material of my
every-day
existence — but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in
itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we
grew up
together
in my paternal halls — yet differently we grew. I ill of health and
buried
in gloom — she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy. Hers the
ramble
on the hill-side — mine the studies of the cloister. I living within my
own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful
meditation
— she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in
her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! — I
call upon her name — Berenice! — and from the gray ruins of memory a
thousand
tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her
image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and
joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies
of Arnheim! — Oh! Naiad among her fountains! — and then — then all is
mystery
and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease — a fatal
disease
— fell like the simoon upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon
her, [page 170:] the spirit of change swept
over her,
pervading
her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most
subtle
and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the
destroyer
came and went, and the victim — where was she? I knew her not — or knew
her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies,
superinduced
by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so
horrible
a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned
as
the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy
not unfrequently terminating in trance itself — trance very
nearly
resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery
was, in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the meantime my own
disease
— for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation —
my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and, aggravated in its
symptoms
by the immoderate use of opium, assumed finally a monomaniac character
of a novel and extraordinary form — hourly and momently gaining vigor —
and at length obtaining over me the most singular and incomprehensible
ascendency. This monomania — if I must so term it — consisted in a
morbid
irritability of the nerves immediately affecting those properties of
the
mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more
than
probable that I am not understood — but I fear that it is indeed in no
manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an
adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which,
in my case, the [page 171:] powers of meditation
(not
to speak technically) busied and, as it were, buried themselves, in the
contemplation of even the most common objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with
my
attention
rivetted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography
of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in
a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor —
to
lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp,
or the embers of a fire — to dream away whole days over the perfume of
a flower — to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by
dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the
mind — to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of
absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in — such
were
a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a
condition
of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but
certainly
bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The
undue,
earnest,
and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature
frivolous,
must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity
common
to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent
imagination.
It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition,
or
exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct
and different. In the one instance [page 172:] the
dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not
frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of
deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion
of a day-dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum
or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my
case
the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming,
through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal
importance.
Few deductions — if any — were made; and those few pertinaciously
returning
in, so to speak, upon the original object as a centre. The meditations
were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie,
the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that
supernaturally
exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease.
In
a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me,
as
I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the
day-dreamer,
the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did
not actually
serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely,
in their imaginative, and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic
qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the
treatise
of the noble Italian Cœlius Secundus Curio "de amplitudine beati
regni
Dei" — St. Austin's great work, the "City of God" — and Tertullian
"de Carne Christi," in which the unintelligible sentence "Mortuus
est Dei filius; credibile est quia ineptum est: [page
173:] et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia
impossibile est"
occupied
my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless
investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from
its balance
only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag
spoken
of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which, steadily resisting the attacks of
human
violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled
only
to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless
thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the fearful
alteration
produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of
Berenice,
would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and
morbid
meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet
such was not by any means the case. In the lucid intervals of my
infirmity,
her calamity indeed gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that
total
wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently
and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a
revolution
had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not
of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have
occurred,
under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to
its
own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more
startling
changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice, and in the
singular
and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her
unparalleled [page
174:] beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the
strange
anomaly of my existence, feelings, with me, had never been of
the
heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the
gray
of the early morning — among the trellissed shadows of the forest at
noon-day
— and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my
eyes,
and I had seen her — not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as
the
Berenice of a dream — not as a being of the earth — earthly — but as
the
abstraction of such a being — not as a thing to admire, but to analyze
— not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse
although
desultory speculation. And now — now I shuddered in her
presence, and
grew
pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate
condition,
I knew that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to
her
of marriage.
And at length the period of our
nuptials was
approaching,
when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of those
unseasonably
warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful
Halcyon,*
I sat, and sat, as I thought, alone, in the inner apartment of the
library.
But uplifting my eyes Berenice stood before me.
Was it my own excited imagination —
or the misty
influence of the atmosphere — or the uncertain [page 175:]
twilight of the chamber — or the gray draperies which fell around her
figure
— that caused it to loom up in so unnatural a degree? I could not tell.
She spoke no word, and I — not for worlds could I have uttered a
syllable.
An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety
oppressed
me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon
the
chair, I remained for some time breathless, and motionless, and with my
eyes rivetted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive,
and
not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the
contour.
My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale,
and
singularly
placid; and the once golden hair fell partially over it, and
overshadowed
the hollow temples with ringlets now black as the raven's wing, and
jarring
discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning
melancholy
of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and I
shrunk
involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin
and shrunken lips. They parted: and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the
teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view.
Would
to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had
died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking [page
176:] up, I found my cousin had departed from the chamber.
But
from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and
would
not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the
teeth.
Not a speck upon their surface — not a shade on their enamel — not a
line
in their configuration — not an indenture in their edges — but what
that
brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I
saw
them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then.
The teeth! — the teeth! — they were here, and there, and every where,
and
visibly, and palpably before me, long, narrow, and excessively white,
with
the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first
terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania,
and
I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In
the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for
the teeth. All other matters and all different interests became
absorbed
in their single contemplation. They — they alone were present to the
mental
eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my
mental
life. I held them in every light — I turned them in every attitude. I
surveyed
their characteristics — I dwelt upon their peculiarities — I pondered
upon
their conformation — I mused upon the alteration in their nature — and
shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient
power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral
expression.
Of Mad'selle [page 177:] Sallé it has been
said,
"que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments," and of Berenice I
more
seriously believed que tous ses dents etaient des idées.
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
ascendency
as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid
the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke
forcibly
in upon my dreams a wild 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 hurriedly from my seat,
and,
throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the
antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears; and she told me that
Berenice
was — no more. Seized with an epileptic fit she had fallen dead 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.
With a heart full of grief, yet
reluctantly, and
oppressed with awe, I made my way to the bed-chamber of the departed.
The
room was large, and very dark, and at every step within its gloomy
precincts
I encountered the paraphernalia of the grave. The coffin, so a menial
told
me, lay surrounded by the curtains of yonder bed, and in that coffin,
he
whisperingly [page 178:] assured me, was all that
remained
of Berenice. Who was it asked me would I not look upon the corpse? I
had
seen the lips of no one move, yet the question had been demanded, and
the
echo of the syllables still lingered in the room. It was impossible to
refuse; and with a sense of suffocation I dragged myself to the side of
the bed. Gently I uplifted the sable draperies of the curtains. As I
let
them fall they descended upon my shoulders, and shutting me thus out
from
the living, enclosed me in the strictest communion with the deceased.
The
very atmosphere was redolent of death. The peculiar smell of the coffin
sickened me! and I fancied a deleterious odor was already exhaling from
the body. I would have given worlds to escape — to fly from the
pernicious
influence of mortality — to breathe once again the pure air of the
eternal
heavens. But I had no longer the power to move — my knees tottered
beneath
me — and I remained rooted to the spot, and gazing upon the frightful
length
of the rigid body as it lay outstretched in the dark coffin without a
lid.
God of heaven! — was it possible? Was
it my brain
that reeled — or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that
stirred
in the white cerement that bound it? Frozen with unutterable awe I
slowly
raised my eyes to the countenance of the corpse. There had been a band
around the jaws, but, I know not how, it was broken asunder. The livid
lips were wreathed into a species of smile, and, through the enveloping
gloom, once again there glared upon me in too palpable reality, the
white
and glistening, [page 179:] and ghastly teeth of
Berenice.
I sprang convulsively from the bed, and, uttering no word, rushed forth
a maniac from that apartment of triple horror, and mystery, and death.
I found myself again 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 had intervened I had no positive, at least no
definite
comprehension. But its memory was rife with horror — horror more
horrible
from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a
fearful
page in the record of 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? And the echoes of the chamber answered
me "what was it?"
On the table beside me burned a lamp,
and near it
lay a little box of ebony. It was a box of no remarkable character, and
I had seen it frequently before, it being the property of the family
physician;
but how came it there upon my table, and why did I [page
180:] shudder in regarding it? These were things 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 words 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 congeal 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 discovered upon its margin — a body enshrouded, yet
still
breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to my garments — they were
muddy and
clotted
with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand — but 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 ebony box that
lay
upon it. But I could not force it open, and in my tremor [page
181:] it slipped from out of 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 many white and
glistening
substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor. |
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