Nevermore

True! — nervous — very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. For his gold I had no desire.

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat.

A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood.

But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned a thousand hale and light-hearted friends, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country.

I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — with an utter depression of soul.