steadily and
stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown. Yet I
believe that I met her first and most frequently in some large, old,
decaying city near the Rhine. Of her family--I have surely heard her
speak. That it is of a remotely ancient date cannot be doubted. Ligeia!
Ligeia! Buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to
deaden impressions of the outward world, it is by that sweet word
alone--by Ligeia--that I bring before mine eyes in fancy the image of
her who is no more. And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon
me that I have _never known_ the paternal name of her who was my friend
and my bethrothed, and who became the partner of my studies, and finally
the wife of my bosom. Was it a playful charge on the part of my Ligeia?
or was it a test of my strength of affection, that I should institute no
inquiries upon this point? or was it rather a caprice of my own--a
wildly romantic offering on the shrine of the most passionate devotion?
I but indistinctly recall the fact itself--what wonder that I have
utterly forgotten the circumstances which originated or attended it?
And, indeed, if ever that spirit which is entitled _Romance_--if ever
she, the wan misty-winged _Ashtophet_ of idolatrous Egypt, presided, as
they tell, over marriages ill-omened, then most surely she presided over
mine.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It
is the _person_ of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat
slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain
attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the
incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came
and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into
my closed study, save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she
placed her marble hand upon my shoulder. In beauty of face no maiden
ever equaled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream--an airy and
spirit-lifting vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which
hovered about the slumbering souls of the daughters of Delos. Yet her
features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught
to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. "There is no exquisite
beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and
_genera_ of beauty, "without some _strangeness_ in the proportion."
Yet, although I saw that the features of Ligeia were not of a clas