I WAS sick --sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length
unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.
The sentence --the dread sentence of death --was the last of distinct
accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial
voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul
the idea of revolution --perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr
of a mill wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more.
Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips
of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white --whiter than the sheet
upon which I trace these words --and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the
intensity of their expression of firmness --of immoveable resolution --of
stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was
Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly
locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because
no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the
soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall
candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed
white and slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came
a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill
as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms
became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them
there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich
musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The
thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full
appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and
entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before
me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the
blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness,
night were the universe.
