which are madness; and drank deeply--although the purple wine
reminded us of blood. For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in
the person of young Zoilus. Dead and at full length he lay,
enshrouded;--the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no
portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the
plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire
of the pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment as
the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But
although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me,
still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their
expression, and gazing down steadily into the depths of the ebony
mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice the songs of the son of
Teos. But gradually my songs they ceased, and their echoes, rolling afar
off among the sable draperies of the chamber, became weak, and
undistinguishable, and so faded away. And lo! from among those sable
draperies, where the sounds of the song departed, there came forth a
dark and undefiled shadow--a shadow such as the moon, when low in
heaven, might fashion from the figure of a man: but it was the shadow
neither of man nor of God, nor of any familiar thing. And quivering
awhile among the draperies of the room it at length rested in full view
upon the surface of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague, and
formless, and indefinite, and was the shadow neither of man nor
God--neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldaea, nor any Egyptian God.
And the shadow rested upon the brazen doorway, and under the arch of the
entablature of the door and moved not, nor spoke any word, but there
became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the shadow rested
was, if I remember aright, over against the feet of the young Zoilus
enshrouded. But we, the seven there assembled, having seen the shadow as
it came out from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but
cast down our eyes, and gazed continually into the depths of the mirror
of ebony. And at length I, Oinos, speaking some low words, demanded of
the shadow its dwelling and its appellation. And the shadow answered, "I
am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and
hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul
Charonian canal." And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in
horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghas