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Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former,
the torture of meditation was excessive--in the latter, supreme. When
the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of
thought, I shook--shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When
Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that
I consented to sleep--for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I
might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into
slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above
which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the
one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams,
I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed in
a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly
there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering
voice whispered the word "Arise!" within my ear.
I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him
who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I
had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While
I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought,
the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly,
while the gibbering voice said again:
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