Much that I encountered on the way
contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which
I have already spoken. While the objects around me --while the
carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon
blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies
which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as
which, I had been accustomed from my infancy --while I hesitated not
to acknowledge how familiar was all this --I still wondered to find
how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring
up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His
countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and
perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet
now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The
windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from
the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within.
Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the
trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more
prominent objects around the eye, however, struggled in vain to
reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the
vaulted and fretted ceiling.
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