Unable to discover its legitimate object, the popular fury at length subsided; leaving behind it, by way of sediment, quite a medley of opinion about this unhappy affair.

One gentleman thought the whole an X-ellent joke.

Another said that, indeed, Bullet-head had shown much X-uberance of fancy.

A third admitted him X-entric, but no more.

A fourth could only suppose it the Yankee’s design to X-press, in a general way, his X-asperation.

‘Say, rather, to set an X-ample to posterity,’ suggested a fifth.

That Bullet-head had been driven to an extremity, was clear to all; and in fact, since that editor could not be found, there was some talk about lynching the other one.

The more common conclusion, however, was that the affair was, simply, X-traordinary and in-X-plicable.  Even the town mathematician confessed that he could make nothing of so dark a problem.  X, every. body knew, was an unknown quantity; but in this case (as he properly observed), there was an unknown quantity of X.

The opinion of Bob, the devil (who kept dark about his having ’X-ed the paragrab’), did not meet with so much attention as I think it deserved, although it was very openly and very fearlessly expressed.  He said that, for his part, he had no doubt about the matter at all, that it was a clear case, that Mr. Bullet-head ’never could be persuaded fur to drink like other folks, but vas continually a-svigging o’ that ere blessed xxx ale, and as a naiteral consekvence, it just puffed him up savage, and made him X (cross) in the X-treme.’

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METZENGERSTEIN

Pestis eram vivus — moriens tua mors ero.

—­ Martin Luther

Horror and fatality have been stalking abroad in all ages.  Why then give a date to this story I have to tell?  Let it suffice to say, that at the period of which I speak, there existed, in the interior of Hungary, a settled although hidden belief in the doctrines of the Metempsychosis.  Of the doctrines themselves — that is, of their falsity, or of their probability — I say nothing.  I assert, however, that much of our incredulity — as La Bruyere says of all our unhappiness — “vient de ne pouvoir être seuls.” {*1}

But there are some points in the Hungarian superstition which were fast verging to absurdity.  They — the Hungarians — differed very essentially from their Eastern authorities.  For example, “The soul,” said the former — I give the words of an acute and intelligent Parisian — “ne demeure qu’un seul fois dans un corps sensible:  au reste — un cheval, un chien, un homme meme, n’est que la ressemblance peu tangible de ces animaux.”

The families of Berlifitzing and Metzengerstein had been at variance for centuries.  Never before were two houses so illustrious, mutually embittered by hostility so deadly.  The origin of this enmity seems to be found in the words of an ancient prophecy — “A lofty name shall have a fearful fall when, as the rider over his horse, the mortality of Metzengerstein shall triumph over the immortality of Berlifitzing.”