"edgar allen poe - fall of the house of usher (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an
habitual trepidancy--an excessive nervous agitation. For
something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by
his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and
by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation
and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and
sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision
(when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to
that species of energetic concision--that abrupt, weighty,
unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation--that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be
observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of
opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his
earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to
afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived
to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a
constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired
to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he immediately added,
which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a
host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed
them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms,
and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He
suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most
insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of
certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his
eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were but
peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did
not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden
slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this
deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be
lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but
in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most
trivial, incident, which may operate upon this intolerable
agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger,
except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved--in
this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or
later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in
some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR."

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and
equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental
condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions
in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many
years, he had never ventured forth--in regard to an influence
whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here
to be re-stated--an influence which some peculiarities in the