'The Fall of the House of Usher,' by Edgar Allan Poe, Part One

01The Fall of the House of Usher, Part 1.

02It was a dark and soundless day, near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens.

03All day I had been riding on horseback through country with little life or beauty, and in the early evening I came within view of the House of Usher.

04I do not know how it was, but with my first sight of the building a sense of heavy sadness filled my spirit.

05I looked at the scene before me, at the house itself, at the ground around it, at the cold stone walls of the building, at its empty eye-like windows, and at a few dead trees.

06I looked at this scene, I say, with a complete sadness of soul, which was no healthy earthly feeling.

07There was a coldness, a sickening of heart, in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt.

08What was it, I asked myself, what was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the House of Usher?

09This was a question to which I could find no answer.

10I stopped my horse beside the building, on the edge of a dark and quiet lake.

11There I could see reflected in the water a clear picture of the dead trees, and of the house and its empty eye-like windows.

12I was now going to spend several weeks in this house of sadness, this house of gloom.

13Its owner was named Roderick Usher.

14We had been friends when we were boys, but many years had passed since our last meeting.

15A letter from him had reached me, a wild letter, which demanded that I reply by coming to see him.

16He wrote of an illness of body, of a sickness of the mind, and of a desire to see me, his best, and indeed his only friend.

17It was the manner in which all this was said.

18It was the heart in it, which did not allow me to say no.

19Although, as boys, we had been together, I really knew little about my friend.

20I knew, however, that his family, a very old one, had long been famous for its understanding of all the arts, and for many quiet acts of kindness to the poor.

21I had learned, too, that the family had never been a large one, with many branches.

22The name had passed always from father to son, and when people spoke of the house of Usher, they included both the family and the family home.

23I again looked up from the picture of the house reflected in the lake to the house itself.

24A strange idea grew in my mind, an idea so strange that I tell it only to show the force of the feelings which had laid their weight on me.

25I really believed that around the whole house, and the ground around it, the air itself was different.

26It was not the air of heaven.

27It rose from the dead, decaying trees, from the gray walls and the quiet lake.

28It was a sickly, unhealthy air that I could see, slow-moving, heavy and gray.

29Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I looked more carefully at the building itself.

30The most noticeable thing about it seemed to be its great age.

31None of the walls had fallen, and yet the stones appeared to be in a condition of advanced decay.

32Perhaps the careful eye would have discovered the beginning of a break in the front of the building, a crack making its way from the top down the wall until it became lost in the dark waters of the lake.

33I rode over a short bridge to the house.

34A man who worked in the house, a servant, took my horse, and I entered.

35Another servant of quiet step led me without a word through many dark turnings to the room of his master.

36Much that I met on the way added, I do not know how, to the strangeness of which I have already spoken.

37While the objects around me, the dark wall coverings, the blackness of the floors, and the things brought home from long-forgotten wars, while these things were like the things I had known since I was a baby, while I admitted that all this was only what I had expected, I was still surprised at the strange ideas which grew in my mind from these simple things.

38The room I came into was very large and high.

39The windows were high and pointed at the top so far above the black floor that they were quite out of reach.

40Only a little light, red in color, made its way through the glass and served to lighten the nearer and larger objects.

41My eyes, however, tried and failed to see into the far high corners of the room.

42Dark coverings hung upon the walls.

43The many chairs and tables had been used for a long, long time.

44Books lay around the room, but could give it no sense of life.

45I felt sadness hanging over everything.

46No escape from this deep, cold gloom seemed possible.

47As I entered the room, Usher stood up from where he had been lying and met me with a warmth which, at first, I could not believe was real.

48A look, however, at his face told me that every word he spoke was true.

49We sat down, and for some moments, while he said nothing, I looked at him with a feeling of sad surprise.

50Surely no man had ever before changed as Roderick Usher had.

51Could this be the friend of my early years?

52It is true that his face had always been unusual.

53He had gray, white skin, eyes large and full of light, lips not bright in color, but of a beautiful shape, a well-shaped nose, hair of great softness, a face that was not easy to forget.

54And now the increase in this strangeness of his face had caused so great a change that I almost did not know him.

55The horrible white of his skin and the strange light in his eyes surprised me and even made me afraid.

56His hair had been allowed to grow, and in its softness it did not fall around his face, but seemed to lie upon the air.

57I could not even with an effort see in my friend the appearance of a simple human being.

58In his manner I saw at once.

59Changes came and went, and I soon found that this resulted from his attempt to quiet a very great nervousness.

60I had indeed been prepared for something like this, partly by his letter and partly by remembering him as a boy.

61His actions were first too quick and then too quiet.

62Sometimes his voice, slow and trembling with fear, quickly changed to a strong, heavy, carefully spaced, too perfectly controlled manner.

63It was in this manner that he spoke of the purpose of my visit, of his desire to see me, and of the deep delight and strength he expected me to give him.

64He told me what he believed to be the nature of his illness.

65It was, he said, of family sickness, and one from which he could not hope to grow better.

66But it was, he added at once, only a nervous illness, which would, without doubt, soon pass away.

67It showed itself in a number of strange feelings.

68Some of these, as he told me of them, interested me, but were beyond my understanding.

69Perhaps the way in which he told me of them added to their strangeness.

70He suffered much from a sickly increase in the feeling of all his senses.

71He could eat only the most tasteless food.

72All flowers smelled too strongly for his nose.

73His eyes were hurt by even a little light, and there were few sounds which did not fill him with horror.

74A certain kind of sick fear was completely his master.

75I shall die, he said.

76I shall die, I must die of this fool's sickness.

77In this way, this way and no other way, I shall be lost.

78I fear what will happen in the future, not for what happens, but for the result of what happens.

79I have indeed no fear of pain, but only fear of its result.

80of terror.

81I feel that my time will soon arrive when I must lose my life and my mind and my soul together in some last battle with that horrible enemy.

82Fear.