Some few ottomans and golden candelabra, of Eastern figure, were in various stations about; and there was the couch, too—­the bridal couch—­of an Indian model, and low, and sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall-like canopy above.  In each of the angles of the chamber stood on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite, from the tombs of the kings over against Luxor, with their aged lids full of immemorial sculpture.  But in the draping of the apartment lay, alas! the chief phantasy of all.  The lofty walls, gigantic in height—­even unproportionably so—­were hung from summit to foot, in vast folds, with a heavy and massive-looking tapestry—­tapestry of a material which was found alike as a carpet on the floor, as a covering for the ottomans and the ebony bed, as a canopy for the bed, and as the gorgeous volutes of the curtains which partially shaded the window.  The material was the richest cloth of gold.  It was spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with arabesque figures, about a foot in diameter, and wrought upon the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black.  But these figures partook of the true character of the arabesque only when regarded from a single point of view.  By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changeable in aspect.  To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and, step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk.  The phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the artificial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies—­giving a hideous and uneasy animation to the whole.

In halls such as these—­in a bridal chamber such as this—­I passed, with the Lady of Tremaine, the unhallowed hours of the first month of our marriage—­passed them with but little disquietude.  That my wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper—­that she shunned me, and loved me but little—­I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise.  I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.  My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Ligeia, the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed.  I reveled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty—­her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love.  Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own.  In the excitement of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call aloud upon her name, during the silence of the night, or among the sheltered recesses of the glens by day, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathways she had abandoned—­ah, could it be forever?—­upon the earth.