hat, having done so, I had died!

* * * * *

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my
cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber
of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away,
the white and ghastly _spectrum_ of the teeth. Not a speck on their
surface--not a shade on their enamel--not an indenture in their
edges--but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon
my memory. I saw them _now_ even more unequivocally than I beheld
them _then_. The teeth!--the teeth!--they were here, and there, and
everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and
excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the
very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full
fury of my _monomania_, and I struggled in vain against its strange and
irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world
I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied
desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in
their single contemplation. They--they alone were present to the mental
eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of
my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every
attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their
peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the
alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in
imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by
the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mademoiselle Salle it
has been well said, "_Que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments_," and
of Berenice I more seriously believed _que toutes ses dents etaient des
idees_. _Des idees!_--ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me!
_Des idees!_--ah _therefore_ it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt
that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me
back to reason.

And the evening closed in upon me thus--and then the darkness came, and
tarried, and went--and the day again dawned--and the mists of a second
night were now gathering around--and still I sat motionless in that
solitary room--and still I sat buried in meditation--and still the
_phantasma_ of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy, as, with
the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing
lights and shadows of the chamber. At