355

THE IMP or THE PERVERSE .•'•'» u; . . . . . 361

THS BALLOON HOAX ........ 367

/ THB MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUB ..... 378

THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGIT .*. . . . . 410

THS PURLOINED LETTER ........ 454

"THOU ART THE MAN" ........ 471

Loss OF BREATH 484

BON-BON .. . . . . . . . . 496

THB DBVIL IN THH BELFRY 511

THE BLACK CAT ;,-.•;*-•.'.. • 518

FOE'S TALES

WILLIAM WILSON

What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path ?

CHAMBERLAYNE'S Pharronida.

LET me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appel lation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn —for the horror—for the detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned!—to the earth art thou not forever dead ? to its honours, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations?—and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?

I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch—these later years—took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin alone it is my present pur pose to assign. Men usuallly grow base by degrees.