our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it.  There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.  To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot.  If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse.  We perpetrate them because we feel that we should not.  Beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the Arch-Fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.

I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question, that I may explain to you why I am here, that I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned.  Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad.  As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation.  For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means of the murder.  I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection.  At length, in reading some French Memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned.  The idea struck my fancy at once.  I knew my victim’s habit of reading in bed.  I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated.  But I need not vex you with impertinent details.  I need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bed-room candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which I there found.  The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the Coroner’s verdict was —­ “Death by the visitation of God.”

Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years.  The idea of detection never once entered my brain.  Of the remains of the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed.  I had left no shadow of a clew by which it would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime.  It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security.  For a very long period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment.  It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin.  But there arrived at length an epoch,