Speaker 1: The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Pole. 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 Am, I not,
and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die,
and to day I would unburthen 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 horror, and to many they will
seem less terrible than baroque. Hereafter, perhaps some intellect may
be found which will reduce my phanfasm 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 it 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 derivable. 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 remarkably 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 tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion
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 language 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 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 Pluto,
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 more than fiendish malevolence,
Gin nurtured thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took
from my waistcoat pocket a pen knife. Opened it, grasped
the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one
of its eyes from the socket. I blush, I burn,
I shudder while I penned 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
the memory of the deed. In the meantime, the cat
slowly recovered the socket of the lost eye, presented, it
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 terror 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 a hundred times found himself committing a
vile or a 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 the 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 cool 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 with
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 reason of 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 detailing a chain of facts, and wish not to
leave even a possible link in perfect. On the day
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 attributed 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 boss relief, upon the white surface, the figure
of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an
accuracy truly marked. 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 into my chamber. This
had probably been done with the 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 deeps, 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 seen, 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 hogsheads 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 received 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 one. 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 my 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 anticipated,
But I know not how or why. It was its
evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. 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's 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 for
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
also 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 pertinent sea,
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 it between
my feet, and thus nearly throw me down, or fastening
its long sharp claws in my dress, clamor in this
manner to my breast. At such times, although I longed
to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld
from so doing, 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's 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 be 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 reason 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, all mournful and terrible, engine of horror and
of crime, 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 word 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
by night knew I the blessing of rest any more.
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 the 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 remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil
thoughts became my soul intimates the darkest and most evil
of 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 a 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, uplifting
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 centered 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 testing it in
the well in the yard, about packing it in a
box as if merchandised 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
are recorded to have walloped 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 red
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 mortar, 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 tear.
I looked round triumphantly and said to myself, here, at least,
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 forebore to present itself
in my present mood. It is impossible to describe or
to 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 the 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 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 rigorous investigation. Of the premises secure. However,
in the inscrutability of my place of a concealment, I
felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them
in their search. They left no nook nor corner unexplored.
At length. For the third or fourth time they descended
into the cellar, I quivered not in a muscle. My
heart beat 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 if but one word by way
of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of
my guiltlessness. Gentlemen, I said at last, as the already
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 rabid 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 brickwork, 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 blow 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 exult in the damnation of my
own thoughts. It is folly to speak swooning. I staggered
to the opposite wall for one instant. The party upon
the stairs remained motionless through extremity of terror and of awe.
In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at
the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed
and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of
the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and
solitary eye of fire, sat 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