During the dull, dark , soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of the country...
... within the view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was-but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from the sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, an overdone cordiality-of the constrained effort of the ennuye man of the word.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis.
From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why-from these paintings...
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest.
For a moment she remained she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold- then, with a low moaning cry,fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.