The year had been a year of terror, and of feelings more intense than terror for which there is no name upon the earth.  For many prodigies and signs had taken place, and far and wide, over sea and land, the black wings of the Pestilence were spread abroad.  To those, nevertheless, cunning in the stars, it was not unknown that the heavens wore an aspect of ill; and to me, the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and ninety-fourth year when, at the entrance of Aries, the planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the terrible Saturnus.  The peculiar spirit of the skies, if I mistake not greatly, made itself manifest, not only in the physical orb of the earth, but in the souls, imaginations, and meditations of mankind.

Over some flasks of the red Chian wine, within the walls of a noble hall, in a dim city called Ptolemais, we sat, at night, a company of seven.  And to our chamber there was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass:  and the door was fashioned by the artisan Corinnos, and, being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within.  Black draperies, likewise, in the gloomy room, shut out from our view the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets —­ but the boding and the memory of Evil they would not be so excluded.  There were things around us and about of which I can render no distinct account —­ things material and spiritual —­ heaviness in the atmosphere —­ a sense of suffocation —­ anxiety —­ and, above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake, and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant.  A dead weight hung upon us.  It hung upon our limbs —­ upon the household furniture —­ upon the goblets from which we drank; and all things were depressed, and borne down thereby —­ all things save only the flames of the seven lamps which illumined our revel.  Uprearing themselves in tall slender lines of light, they thus remained burning all pallid and motionless; and in the mirror which their lustre formed upon the round table of ebony at which we sat, each of us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance, and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions.  Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way —­ which was hysterical; and sang the songs of Anacreon —­ which are madness; and drank deeply —­ although the purple wine reminded us of blood.  For there was yet another tenant of our chamber in the person of young Zoilus.  Dead, and at full length he lay, enshrouded; the genius and the demon of the scene.  Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes, in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die.  But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still