Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of

Eastern figure, were in various stations about —

and there was the couch, too — the bridal couch
— of 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
phantasy of all. The lofty walls, gigantic in height
— even unproportionably so — were hung from
summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and
massive looking tapestry — tapestry 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 enteringthe 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 Northman, 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 these — in a bridal chamber

such as this — I 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 temper — that she
shunned me, and loved me but little — I 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 ardor of my longing for the
departed, I could restore her to the pathway she
had abandoned — ah, 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 convalescent — finally
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 sounds — of the slight
sounds — and 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 the side of her ebony bed,
upon one of the ottomans of India. She partly
arose, and spoke, in an earnest low whisper, of
sounds which she then heard, but which I could
not hear — of motions which she then saw, but
which I could not perceive. The wind was rushing
hurriedly behind the tapestries, and I wished to
show her (what let me confess it, I could
not all believe) that those almost inarticulate
breathings, and those very gentle variations of
the figures upon the wall, were but the natural
effects of that customary rushing of the wind.
But a deadly pallor, overspreading her face, had
proved to me that my exertions to reassure her
would be fruitless. She appeared to be fainting,
and no attendants were within call. I
remembered where was deposited a decanter of
light wine which had been ordered by her
physicians, and hastened across the chamber to
procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of
the censer, two circumstances of a startling
nature attracted my attention. I had felt that
some palpable although invisible object had
passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there
lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of
the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow
— a faint indefinite shadow of angelic aspect —
such as might be fancied for the shadow of a
shade. But I was wild with the excitement of an
immoderate dose of opium, and heeded these
things but little, nor spoke of them to Rowena.
Finding the wine, I recrossed the chamber, and
poured out a goblet-ful, which I held to the lips
of the fainting lady. She had now partially
recovered, however, and took the vessel herself
while I sank upon the ottoman near me, with my
eyes fastened upon her person. It was then that I
became distinctly aware of a gentle-footfall upon
the carpet, and near the couch; and in a second
thereafter, as Rowena was in the act of raising
the wine to her lips, I saw, or may have dreamed
that I saw, fall within the goblet, as if from some
invisible spring, in the atmosphere of the room,
three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby
colored fluid. If this I saw — not so Rowena. She
swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I forbore
to speak to her of a circumstance which must,
after all, I considered, have been but the
suggestion of a vivid imagination, rendered
morbidly active by the terror of the lady, by the
opium, and by the hour.

Yet I cannot conceal it from my own perception

that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the
ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took
place in the disorder of my wife; so that, on the
third subsequent night, the hands of her menials
prepared her for the tomb, and on the fourth, I
sat alone, with her shrouded body, in that
fantastic chamber which had received her as my
bride. Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted,
shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye
upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room,
upon the varying figures of the drapery, and
upon the writhing of the parti-colored fires in
the censer overhead. My eyes then fell, as I
called to mind the circumstances of a former
night, to the spot beneath the glare of the
censer where I had seen the faint traces of the
shadow. It was there, however, no longer, and
breathing with greater freedom, I turned my
glances to the pallid and rigid figure upon the
bed. Then rushed upon me a thousand
memories of Ligeia — and then came back upon
my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood,
the whole of that unutterable wo with which I
had regarded her thus enshrouded. The night
waned; and still, with a bosom full of bitter
thoughts of the one only and supremely beloved,
I remained gazing upon the body of Rowena.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier,

or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a
sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me
from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed
of ebony — the bed of death. I listened in an
agony of superstitious terror — but there was no
repetition of the sound. I strained my vision to
detect any motion in the corpse — but there was
not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have
been deceived. I had heard the noise, however
faint, and my soul was awakened within me. I
resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention
riveted upon the body. Many minutes elapsed
before any circumstance occurred tending to
throw light upon the mystery. At length it
became evident that a slight, a very feeble, and
barely noticeable tinge of color had flushed up
within the cheeks, and along the sunken small
veins of the eyelids. Through a species of
unutterable horror and awe, for which the
language of mortality has no sufficiently
energetic expression, I felt my heart cease to
beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat. Yet a
sense of duty finally operated to restore my self-
possession. I could no longer doubt that we had
been precipitate in our preparations for
interment — that Rowena still lived. It was
necessary that some immediate exertion be
made; yet the turret was altogether apart from
the portion of the abbey tenanted by the
servants — there were none within call — I had
no means of summoning them to my aid without
leaving the room for many minutes — and this I
could not venture to do. I therefore struggled
alone in my endeavors to call back the spirit still
hovering. In a short period it was certain,
however, that a relapse had taken place; the
color disappeared from both eyelid and cheek,
leaving a wanness even more than that of
marble; the lips became doubly shrivelled and
pinched up in the ghastly expression of death; a
repulsive clamminess and coldness overspread
rapidly the surface of the body; and all the usual
rigorous stiffness immediately supervened. I fell
back with a shudder upon the couch from which
I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave
myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia.

An hour thus elapsed when (could it be

possible?) I was a second time aware of some
vague sound issuing from the region of the bed.
I listened — in extremity of horror. The sound
came again — it was a sigh. Rushing to the
corpse, I saw — distinctly saw — a tremor upon
the lips. In a minute afterward, they relaxed,
disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth.
Amazement now struggled in my bosom with the
profound awe which had hitherto reigned there
alone. I felt that my vision grew dim, that my
reason wandered, and it was only by a violent
effort that I at length succeeded in nerving
myself to the task which duty thus, once more,
had pointed out. There was now a partial glow
upon the forehead and upon the cheek and
throat; a perceptible warmth pervaded the
whole frame; there was even a slight pulsation at
the heart. The lady lived; and with redoubled
ardor I betook myself to the task of restoration. I
chafed and bathed the temples and the hands,
and used every exertion which experience, and
no little medical reading, could suggest. But in
vain. Suddenly, the color fled, the pulsation
ceased, the lips resumed the expression of the
dead, and, in an instant afterward, the whole
body took upon itself the icy chilliness, the livid
hue, the intense rigidity, the sunken outline, and
all the loathsome peculiarities of that which has
been, for many days, a tenant of the tomb.

And again I sunk into visions of Ligeia — and

again, (what marvel that I shudder while I
write?) again there reached my ears a low sob
from the region of the ebony bed. But why shall I
minutely detail the unspeakable horrors of that
night? Why shall I pause to relate how, time after
time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this
hideous drama of revivification was repeated;
how each terrific relapse was only into a sterner
and apparently more irredeemable death; how
each agony wore the aspect of a struggle with
some invisible foe; and how each struggle was
succeeded by I know not what of wild change in
the personal appearance of the corpse? Let me
hurry to a conclusion.

The greater part of the fearful night had worn

away, and she who had been dead, once again
stirred — and now more vigorously than
hitherto, although arousing from a dissolution
more appalling in its utter hopelessness than
any. I had long ceased to struggle or to move,
and remained sitting rigidly upon the ottoman, a
helpless prey to a whirl of violent emotions, of
which extreme awe was perhaps the least
terrible, the least consuming. The corpse, I
repeat, stirred, and now more vigorously than
before. The hues of life flushed up with
unwonted energy into the countenance — the
limbs relaxed — and, save that the eyelids were
yet pressed heavily together, and that the
bandages and draperies of the grave still
imparted their charnel character to the figure, I
might have dreamed that Rowena had indeed
shaken off, utterly, the fetters of Death. But if
this idea was not, even then, altogether adopted,
I could at least doubt no longer, when, arising
from the bed, tottering, with feeble steps, with
closed eyes, and with the manner of one
bewildered in a dream, the thing that was
enshrouded advanced bodily and palpably into
the middle of the apartment.

I trembled not — I stirred not — for a crowd of

unutterable fancies connected with the air, the
stature, the demeanor of the figure, rushing
hurriedly through my brain, had paralyzed —
had chilled me into stone. I stirred not — but
gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad
disorder in my thoughts — a tumult
unappeasable. Could it, indeed, be
the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it
indeed be Rowena at all — the fair-haired, the
blue-eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine?
Why, why should I doubt it? The bandage lay
heavily about the mouth — but then might it not
be the mouth of the breathing Lady of Tremaine.
And the cheeks — there were the roses as in her
noon of life — yes, these might indeed be the
fair cheeks of the living Lady of Tremaine. And
the chin, with its dimples, as in health, might it
not be hers? — but had she then grown taller
since her malady? What inexpressible madness
seized me with that thought? One bound, and I
had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch,
she let fall from her head, unloosened, the
ghastly cerements which had confined it, and
there streamed forth, into the rushing
atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of
long and dishevelled hair; it was blacker than the
raven wings of the midnight! And now slowly
opened the eyes of the figure which stood before
me. “Here then, at least,” I shrieked aloud, “can I
never — can I never be mistaken — these are the
full, and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost
love — of the lady — of the Lady LIGEIA!”