The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. For the most wild yet most homely
narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief,
Mad, Indeed would I be to expect it in a case where my very
senses reject their own evidence. Yet, Mad, I am not, and
very surely do I not dream. But to morrow I die, and to
day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the
world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household
events. In their consequences. These events have terrified, have tortured, have
destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me,
they have presented little but whore to many. They will seem less bearable than
baroques. Hereafter, perhaps some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm
to the commonplace, some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less
excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with
awe nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects. From
my infancy. I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition.
My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of
my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my
parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my
time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This
peculiarity of character grew with my growth and in my manhood. I derived from
one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection
for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of
explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus deliverable. There is something
in the unselfish and self sacrificing love of a brute which goes directly to the
heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer
fidelity of mere man. I married early, and was happy to find in
my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic
pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.
We had birds, goldfish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey,
and a cat. This latter was a remarkable, large and beautiful animal,
entirely black and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence,
my wife, who at heart was not a little tincture with superstition,
made frequent allusions to the ancient popular notion which regarded all black cats as witches
in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point, And I
mentioned the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens just now
to be remembered. Pluto, this was the cat's name, was my favorite
pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I
went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him
from following me through the streets. Our friendship lasted in this manner for several
years, during which my general temperament and character, through the instrumentality of the
fiend in temperance, had I blushed to confess, it, experienced a radical
alteration. For the worse. I grew day by day more moody, more
irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others, I suffered myself to use
intemperate languish to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.
My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my
disposition. I not only neglected them, but ill used them. For Pluto,
however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him,
as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even
the dog, when by accident or through affection, they came in my way.
But my disease grew upon me, for what disease is like alcohol,
And at length even Tuto, who was now becoming old and consequently somewhat peevish.
Even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper. One night,
returning home, much intoxicated from one of my haunts about town, I
fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him, when, in
his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with
his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself
no longer. My original soul seemed at once to take its flight from my
body, and a more than fiendish malevolence gin nurtured thrilled every fiber of my
frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a penknife. Opened it, grasped
the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of his eyes from
the socket. I blush, I burn, I shudder while I pen the
damnable atrocity. When reason returned with the morning, when I had slept off
the fumes of the night's debauch, I experienced a sentiment half of horror,
half of remorse for the crime of which I had been guilty. But it
was at best a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.
I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the
deed. In the meantime, the cat slowly recovered the socket of the lost
eye presented, is true a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to
suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but as might
be expected, fled in extreme tear at my approach. I had so much
of my old heart left as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike
on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this
feeling soon gave place to irritation, and then came, as if to my
final and irrevocable overthrow. The spirit of perverseness of this spirit, philosophy takes
no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than I
am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart, one
of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments, which give direction to the character of
man, who has not hundreds of times found himself committing a vile or silly
action for no other reason than because he knows he should not. Have We
not a perpetual inclination in the teeth of our best judgment to violate that which
is law, merely because we understand it to be such. This spirit of
perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable
longing of the soul to vex itself, to offer violence to its own nature,
to do wrong for wrong's sake, only that urged me to continue,
and finally, to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute.
One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and
hung it to the limb of a tree. Hung it with the tears streaming
from my eyes and the bitterest remorse at my heart. Hung it because I
knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me
no offense. Hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing
a sin, a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to
place it if such a thing were possible, even beyond the reach of the
infinite mercy of the most merciful and most terrible God. On the night of
the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep
by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames.
The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife,
a servant, and myself made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was
complete, My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward
to despair. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of
cause and effect between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am telling a
chain of facts, and wished not to leave even a possible link imperfect.
On the days succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins the walls, with
one exception had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall not
very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which
had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here in great measure
resisted the action of the fire, a fact which I attribute to its having
been recently spread about this wall. A dense crowd were collected, and many
persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager
attention. The words strange, singular, and other similar expressions excited my curiosity.
I approached and saw, as if graven in base relief, upon the
white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with
an accuracy truly marvelous. There was a rope about the animal's neck. When
I first beheld this apparition, for I could scarcely regard it as less.
My wonder and my terror were extreme, But at length reflection came to my
aid. The cat I remembered had been hung in a garden adjacent to the
house. Upon the alarm of fire. This garden had been immediately filled by
the crowd, by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from
the tree and thrown through an open window in my chamber. This had probably
been done with a view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other
walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly spread
plaster, the lime of which, with the flames and the ammonia from the
carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it. Although I thus
readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the
startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep
impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm
of the cat, And during this period there came back into my spirit a
half sentiment that seemed but was not remorse. I went so far as to
regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me among the vile
haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species,
and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place. One night,
as I sat half stupefied in a den of more than infamy. My
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object reposing upon the head of one of
the immense hogheads of gin or of Rum, which constituted the chief furniture of
the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for
some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had
not sooner perceived the object. Thereupon I approached it and touched it with my
hand. It was a black cat, a very large one, fully as
large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect, But only Pluto
had not a white hair upon any portion of his body. But this cat
had a large, although indefinite, splotch of white covering nearly the whole region
of the breast. Upon touching him, he immediately arose, purred, loudly,
rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This,
then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at
once offered to purchase it of the landlord, but this person made no claim
to it, knew nothing of it, had never seen it before. I
continued my caresses, and when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced
a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so, occasionally stooping
and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house, it domesticated
itself at once and became immediately a great favorite with my wife. For my
own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This
was just the reverse of what I had anticipate, But I know not how
or why it was. Its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me.
By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness
of hatred. I avoided the creature, a certain sense of shame, and
the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty preventing me from physically abusing it.
I did not for some week strike or otherwise violently ill use it. But
gradually, very gradually, I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing,
and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
pestilence. What added no doubt to my hatred of the beast was the discovery,
on the morning after I brought it home that, like Pluto, it
all so had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however,
only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said,
possessed in a high degree that humanity of feeling, which had once been
my distinguishing trait and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to
increase. It followed my footsteps with a pernacity which it would be difficult to
make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch beneath my chair,
or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If
I arose to walk, it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw
me down, or fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber
in its manner to my breast. At such times, although I longed to
destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from doing so, partly
by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly, let me confess it
at once, by absolute dread of the beast. This dread was not exactly
a dread of physical evil. And yet I should be at a loss how
otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own. Yes, even
in this felon cell I am almost ashamed to own that the terror and horror
with which the animal inspired me had been heightened by one of the merest chimeras
it would have been possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention more
than once to the character of the mark of white hair of which I have
spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the
one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large,
had been originally very indefinite, but by slow degrees degrees nearly imperceptible,
and which for a long time my reasons struggled to reject as fanciful, it
had at length assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation
of an object that I shudder to name, And for this above all I
loathed and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared.
It was now, I say, the image of a hideous, of
a ghastly thing, of the gallows, oh mournful and terrible engine of horror,
and of cras time of agony and of death. And now was I
indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity, and a brute beast whose fellow
I had contemptuously destroyed, A brute beast to work out for me, for
me, a man fashioned in the image of the High God, so much
of insufferable woe, alas neither by day nor night knew I the blessing of
rest anymore. During the former, the creature left me no moment alone,
And in the latter I started, hourly from dreams of unutterable fear to find
the hot breath of a thing upon my face, and its vast weight,
an incarnate nightmare that I had no power to shake off, incumbent eternally upon
my heart. Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnants
of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole inmates, the
darkest of most evil thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred
of all things and of all mankind, while from the sudden, frequent,
and ungovernable outbursts of fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining
wife alas was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. One day
she accompanied me upon some household errand into the cellar of the old building which
our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs,
and nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Lifting an axe
and forgetting in my wrath the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand.
I aimed a blow at the animal, which of course would have proved instantly
fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the
hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal,
I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain.
She fell dead upon the spot without a groan. This hideous murder accomplished.
I set myself forthwith and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing
the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house,
either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the
neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting
the corpse into minute fragments and destroying them by fire. At another I resolved
to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again,
I deliberated about casting it into the well in the yard, about packing it
in a box as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting
a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it
up in the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages I recorded to
have walled up their victims for a purpose such as this. The cellar was
well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout
with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening.
Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection caused by a false
chimney or fireplace that had been filled up and made to resemble the rest of
the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at
this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before,
so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this calculation. I
was not deceived by means of a crowbar. I easily dislodged the bricks,
and having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in
that position, while with little trouble, I relayed the whole structure as it
originally stood, Having procured murder, sand and hair with every possible precaution,
I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with
this I very carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished,
I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest
appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with
the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly and said to myself, here at
last, then my labor has not been in vain. My next step was
to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness,
for I had at length firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I
been able to meet with it at the moment, there could have been no
doubt of its fate. But it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed
at the violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself in my
present mood. It is impossible to describe or imagine the deep, the blissful
sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom.
It did not make its appearance during the night, and thus for one night
at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquility slept.
I slept, even with the burden of murder upon my soul. The
second and third day passed, and still my tormentor came not once again.
I breathed as a free man. The monster in terror had fled the premises,
forever I should behold it no more. My happiness was supreme. The
guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but a little. Some few inquiries had
been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been
instituted, but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my
future felicity as secured. Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party
of the police came very unexpectedly into the house and proceeded again to make a
rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure. However, in the inscrutability of my
place of concealment. I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me to
accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At
length. For the third or fourth time they descended into the cellar, I
quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat as calmly as that of one
whose slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I
folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The
police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was
too strong to be restrained. I burned to say but one word by way
of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness. Gentlemen,
I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, I delight
to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health and a little more
courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this this is a very well constructed
house. In the rabbit desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what
I uttered it all, I may say, an excellently well constructed house these
walls. Are you going, gentlemen? These walls are solidly put together.
And here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily with a
cane, which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the
brick, behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. But
may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the arch fiend. No
sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into the silence, than I was
answered by a voice from within the tomb, by a cry, at first
muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling
into one long, loud and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman, a
howl, a wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such
as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the
damned in their agony, and of the demons that exalted in the damnation of
my own thoughts. It's folly to speak swooning, I staggered to the opposite
wall. For an instant. The party upon the stairs remained motionless through extremity
of terror, and of awe, and the next a dozen stout arms were
toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already getting decayed
and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon
its head, with red extended mouth and solitary terry eye of fire set the
hideous beast, whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice
had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the
tomb end of the Black Cat