For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without
motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not
make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate- and yet there
was something at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair-
such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being-
despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy
lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It was dark- all dark. I knew that
the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long
passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual
faculties- and yet it was dark- all dark- the intense and utter
raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.
I endeavored to shriek-, and my lips and my parched tongue moved
convulsively together in the attempt- but no voice issued from the
cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent
mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate
and struggling inspiration.
The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me
that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead.
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