pen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass
away, ere these memorials be seen of men. And, when seen, there will be
some to disbelieve, and some to doubt, and yet a few who will find much
to ponder upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.

The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than
terror for which there is no name upon the earth. For many prodigies and
signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black
wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad. To those, nevertheless,
cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect
of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that
now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth
year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined
with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the
skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in
the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and
meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble
hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of
seven. And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of
brass: and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of
rare workmanship, was fastened from within. Black draperies, likewise,
in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars,
and the peopleless streets--but the boding and the memory of Evil they
would not be so excluded. There were things around us and about of
which I can render no distinct account--things material
and spiritual--heaviness in the atmosphere--a sense of
suffocation--anxiety--and, above all, that terrible state of existence
which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and
awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead weight
hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs--upon the household furniture--upon
the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and
borne down thereby--all things save only the flames of the seven lamps
which illumined our revel. Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of
light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the
mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at
which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his
own countenance, and t