The Pit and The Pendulum
Edgar Allen Poe
I was sick--sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbounded me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence--the dreaded sentence of death--was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged into 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 hear 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 immovable 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 then writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion with 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 walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candled upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slander angles who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fiber in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angle forms became meaningless specters, 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 fell 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 the darkness supervened; all sensations appear swallowed up in a mad rushing descend as of the soul into Hades. The silence, and stillness, and night were in the universe. 本章未完，请点击下一页继续阅读！ 第1页/共3页
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