The Lumber Room by Saki / Dřevěná komora

 The Lumber Room

The Lumber Room / Dřevěná komora

<  1  >

The children were to be driven, as a special treat, to the sands at Jagborough. Nicholas was not to be of the party; he was in disgrace. Only that morning he had refused to eat his wholesome bread-and-milk on the seemingly frivolous ground that there was a frog in it. Older and wiser and better people had told him that there could not possibly be a frog in his bread-and-milk and that he was not to talk nonsense; he continued, nevertheless, to talk what seemed the veriest nonsense, and described with much detail the coloration and markings of the alleged frog. The dramatic part of the incident was that there really was a frog in Nicholas's basin of bread-and-milk; he had put it there himself, so he felt entitled to know something about it. The sin of taking a frog from the garden and putting it into a bowl of wholesome bread-and-milk was enlarged on at great length, but the fact that stood out clearest in the whole affair, as it presented itself to the mind of Nicholas, was that the older, wiser, and better people had been proved to be profoundly in error in matters about which they had expressed the utmost assurance. "You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favourable ground. So his boy-cousin and girl-cousin and his quite uninteresting younger brother were to be taken to Jagborough sands that afternoon and he was to stay at home. His cousins' aunt, who insisted, by an unwarranted stretch of imagination, in styling herself his aunt also, had hastily invented the Jagborough expedition in order to impress on Nicholas the delights that he had justly forfeited by his disgraceful conduct at the breakfast-table. It was her habit, whenever one of the children fell from grace, to improvise something of a festival nature from which the offender would be rigorously debarred; if all the children sinned collectively they were suddenly informed of a circus in a neighbouring town, a circus of unrivalled merit and uncounted elephants, to which, but for their depravity, ther would have been taken that very day. < 2 > A few decent tears were looked for on the part of Nicholas when the moment for the departure of the expedition arrived. As a matter of fact, however, all the crying was done by his girl-cousin, who scraped her knee rather painfully against the step of the carriage as she was scrambling in. "How she did howl," said Nicholas cheerfully, as the party drove off without any of the elation of high spirits that should have characterized it. "She'll soon get over that," said the soi-disant aunt; "it will be a glorious afternoon for racing about over those beautiful sands. How they will enjoy themselves!" "Bobby won't enjoy himself much, and he won't race much either," said Nicholas with a grim chuckle; "his boots are hurting him. They're too tight." "Why didn't he tell me they were hurting?" asked the aunt with some asperity. "He told you twice, but you weren't listening. You often don't listen when we tell you important things." "You are not to go into the gooseberry garden," said the aunt, changing the subject. "Why not?" demanded Nicholas. "Because you are in disgrace," said the aunt loftily. Nicholas did not admit the flawlessness of the reasoning; he felt perfectly capable of being in disgrace and in a gooseberry garden at the same moment. His face took on an expression of considerable obstinacy. It was clear to his aunt that he was determined to get into the gooseberry garden, "only," as she remarked to herself, "because I have told him he is not to." Now the gooseberry garden had two doors by which it might be entered, and once a small person like Nicholas could slip in there he could effectually disappear from view amid the masking growth of artichokes, raspberry canes, and fruit bushes. The aunt had many other things to do that aftemoon, but she spent an hour or two in trivial gardening operations among flower beds and shrubberies, whence she could watch the two doors that led to the forbidden paradise. She was a woman of few ideas, with immense powers of concentration. < 3 > Nicholas made one or two sorties into the front garden, wriggling his way with obvious stealth of purpose towards one or other of the doors, but never able for a moment to evade the aunt's watchful eye. As a matter of fact, he had no intention of trying to get into the gooseberry garden, but it was extremely convenient for him that his aunt should believe that he had; it was a belief that would keep her on selfimposed sentry-duty for the greater part of the aftemoon. Having thoroughly confirmed and fortified her suspicions, Nicholas slipped back into the house and rapidly put into execution a plan of action that had long germinated in his brain. By standing on a chair in the library one could reach a shelf on which reposed a fat, important-looking key. The key was as important as it looked; it was the instrument which kept the mysteries of the lumber-room secure from unauthorized intrusion, which opened a way only for aunts and such-like privileged persons. Nicholas had not had much experience of the art of fitting keys into keyholes and turning locks, but for some days past he had practised with the key of the schoolroom door; he did not believe in trusting too much to luck and accident. The key turned stiffly in the lock, but it turned. The door opened, and Nicholas was in an unknown land, compared with which the gooseberry garden was a stale delight, a mere material pleasure. Often and often Nicholas had pictured to himself what the lumber-room might be like, that region that was so carefully sealed from youthful eyes and concerning which no questions were ever answered. It came up to his expectations. In the first place it was large and dimly lit, one high window opening onto the forbidden garden being its only source of illumination. In the second place it was a storehouse of unimagined treasures. Tne aunt-by-assertion was one of those people who think that things spoil by use and consign them to dust and damp by way of preserving them. Such parts of the house as Nicholas knew best were rather bare and cheerless, but here there were wonderful things for the eye to feast on. First and foremost there was a piece of framed tapestry that was evidently meant to be a fire-screen. To Nicholas it was a living, breathing story; he sat down on a roll of Indian hangings, glowing in wonderful colours beneath a layer of dust, and took in all the details of the tapestry picture. A man, dressed in the hunting costume of some remote period, had just transfixed a stag with an arrow; it could not have been a difficult shot because the stag was only one or two paces away from him; in the thickly growing vegetation that the picture suggested it would not have been difficult to creep up to a feeding stag, and the two spotted dogs that were springing forward to join in the chase had evidently been trained to keep to heel till the arrow was discharged. That part of the picture was simple, if interesting, but did the huntsman see, what Nicholas saw, that four galloping wolves were coming in his direction through the wood? There might be more than four of them hidden behind the trees, and in any case would the man and his dogs be able to cope with the four wolves if they made an attack? The man had only two arrows left in his quiver, and he might miss with one or both of them; all one knew about his skill in shooting was that he could hit a large stag at a ridiculously short range. Nicholas sat for many golden minutes revolving the possibilities of the scene; he was inclined to think that there were more than four wolves and that the man and his dogs were in a tight corner. < 4 > But there were other objects of delight and interest claiming his instant attention; there were quaint twisted candlesticks in the shape of snakes, and a teapot fashioned like a china duck, out of whose open beak the tea was supposed to come. How dull and shapeless the nursery teapot seemed in comparison! And there was a carved sandalwood box packed tight with aromatic cotton-wool, and between the layers of cotton-wool were little brass figures, hump-necked bulls, and peacocks and goblins, delightful to see and to handle. Less promising in appearance was a large square book with plain black covers; Nicholas peeped into it, and, behold, it was full of coloured pictures of birds. And such birds! In the garden, and in the lanes when he went for a walk, Nicholas came accross a few birds, of which the largest were an occasional magpie or wood-pigeons here were herons and bustards, kites, toucans, tiger-bitterns, brush turkeys, ibises, golden pheasants, a whole portrait gallery of undreamed-of creatures. And as he was admiring the colouring of the mandarin duck and assigning a life-history to it, the voice of his aunt in shrill vociferation of his name came from the gooseberry garden without. She had grown suspicious at his long disappearance, and had leapt to the conclusion that he had climbed over the wall behind the sheltering screen of the lilac bushes: she was now engaged in energetic and rather hopeless search for him among the artichokes and raspberry canes. "Nicholas, Nicholas!" she screamed, "you are to come out of this at once. It's no use trying to hide there; I can see you all the time." It was probably the first time for twenty years that any one had smiled in that lumber-room. Presently the angry repetitions of Nicholas's name gave way to a shriek, and a cry for somebody to come quickly. Nicholas shut the book, restored it carefully to its place in a corner, and shook some dust from a neighbouring pile of newspapers over it. Then he crept from the room, locked the door, and replaced the key exactly where he had found it. His aunt was still calling his name when he sauntered into the front garden. < 5 > "Who's calling?" he asked. "Me," came the answer from the other side of the wall; "didn't you hear me? I've been looking for you in the gooseberry garden, and I've slipped into the rain-water tank. Luckily there's no water in it, but the sides are slippery and I can't get out. Fetch the little ladder from under the cherry tree--" "I was told I wasn't to go into the gooseberry garden," said Nicholas promptly. "I told you not to, and now I tell you that you may," came the voice from the rain-water tank, rather impatiently. "Your voice doesn't sound like aunt's," objected Nicholas; "you may be the Evil One tempting me to be disobedient. Aunt often tells me that the Evil One tempts me and that I always yield This time I'm not going to yield." "Don't talk nonsense," said the prisoner in the tank; "go and fetch the ladder." "Will there be strawberry jam for tea?" asked Nicholas innocently. "Certainly there will be," said the aunt, privately resolving that Nicholas should have none of it. "Now I know that you are the Evil One and not aunt," shouted Nicholas gleefully; "when we asked aunt for strawberry jam yesterday she said there wasn't any.  I know there are four jars of it in the store cupboard, because I looked, and of course you know it's there, but she doesn't, because she said there wasn't any. Oh, Devil, you have sold yourself!" There was an unusual sense of luxury in being able to talk to an aunt as though one was talking to the Evil One, but Nicholas knew, with childish discernment that such luxuries were not to be over-indulged in. He walked noisily away, and it was a kitchenmaid, in search of parsley, who eventually rescued the aunt from the rain-water tank. Tea that evening was partaken of in a fearsome silence. Tne tide had been at its highest when the children had arrived at Jagborough Cove, so there had been no sands to play on--a circumstance that the aunt had overlooked in the haste of organising her punative expedition. The tightness of Bobby's boots had had a disasterous effect on his temper the whole of the afternoon, and altogether the children could not have been said to have enjoyed themselves. The aunt maintained the frozen muteness of one who has suffered undignified and unmerited detention in a rain-water tank for thirty-five minutes. As for Nicholas, he, too, was silent, in the absorption of one who has much to think about; it was just possible, he considered, that the huntsman would escape with his hounds while the wolves feasted on the stricken stag. "The Lumber Room" - A short animated horror story

BLUEBEARD by Charles Perrault / Modrovous - Pohádka pro dospělé (Nejděsivější pohádka)

Bluebeard 
A mysterious man with a blue beard came into the country. There were rumors about him being married several times but nobody knows what happened to his wives. In spite of that, a lovely girl from the neighborhood married him.After a while, Bluebeard had to leave the castle. He gave all his keys to his wife and specifically forbade her opening one of the rooms in the castle.But she couldn't resist and open the door of the room where she found the bodies of Bluebeard's ex-wives. He immediately returned and said she can only say her prayers before her punishment - death. Bluebeard's wife calls her sister for help.The sister sent brothers of Bluebeard's wife to rescue her and kill the murderer.

“BLUEBEARD”

by Charles Perrault

There was, some time ago, a gentleman who was very rich. He had fine town and country houses, his dishes and plates were all of gold or silver, his rooms were hung with damask, his chairs and sofas were covered with the richest silks, and his carriages were all gilt with gold in a grand style. But it happened that this gentleman had a blue beard, which made him so very frightful and ugly, that none of the ladies, in the parts where he lived, would venture to go into his company.

 Now there was a certain lady of rank, who lived very near him, and had two daughters, both of them of very great beauty. Blue Beard asked her to bestow one of them upon him for a wife, and left it to herself to choose which of the two it should be. But both the young ladies again and again said they would never marry Blue Beard; yet, to be as civil as they could, each of them said, the only reason why she would not have him was, because she was loath to hinder her sister from the match, which would be such a good one for her.

 Still the truth of the matter was, they could neither of them bear the thoughts of having a husband with a blue beard; and besides, they had heard of his having been married to several wives before, and nobody could tell what had ever become of any of them. As Blue Beard wished very much to gain their favour, he asked the lady and her daughters, and some ladies who were on a visit at their house, to go with him to one of his country seats, where they spent a whole week, during which they passed all their time in nothing but parties for hunting and fishing, music, dancing, and feasts. 

No one even thought of going to bed, and the nights were passed in merry-makings of all kinds. In short, the time rolled on in so much pleasure, that the youngest of the two sisters began to think that the beard which she had been so much afraid of, was not so very blue, and that the gentleman who owned it was vastly civil and pleasing. Soon after their return home, she told her mother that she had no longer any dislike to accept of Blue Beard for her husband; and in a very short time they were married.

About a month after the marriage had taken place, Blue Beard told his wife that he should be forced to leave her for a few weeks, as he had some affairs to attend to in the country. He desired her to be sure to indulge herself in every kind of pleasure, to invite as many of her friends as she liked, and to treat them with all sorts of dainties, that her time might pass pleasantly till he came back again.

 “Here,” said he, “are the keys of the two large wardrobes. 

This is the key of the great box that contains the best plate, which we use for company, this belongs to my strong box, where I keep my money, and this belongs to the casket, in which are all my jewels. Here also is a master-key to all the rooms in the house; but this small key belongs to the closet at the end of the long gallery on the ground floor. 

I give you leave,” said he, “to open, or to do what you like with all the rest except this closet. This, my dear, you must not enter, nor even put the key into the lock, for all the world. If you do not obey me in this one thing, you must expect the most dreadful punishments.” She promised to obey his orders in the most faithful manner; and Blue Beard, after kissing her tenderly, stepped into his coach, and drove away.

When Blue Beard was gone, the friends of his wife did not wait to be asked, so eager were they to see all the riches and fine things she had gained by marriage; for they had none of them gone to the wedding, on account of their dislike to the blue beard of the bridegroom. As soon as ever they came to the house, they ran about from room to room, from closet to closet, and then from wardrobe to wardrobe, looking into each with wonder and delight, and said, that every fresh one they came to, was richer and finer than what they had seen the moment before. 

At last they came to the drawing-rooms, where their surprise was made still greater by the costly grandeur of the hangings, the sofas, the chairs, carpets, tables, sideboards, and looking-glasses; the frames of these last were silver-gilt, most richly adorned, and in the glasses they saw themselves from head to foot. In short, nothing could exceed the richness of what they saw; and they all did not fail to admire and envy the good fortune of their friend. 

But all this time the bride herself was far from thinking about the fine speeches they made to her, for she was eager to see what was in the closet her husband had told her not to open. So great, indeed, was her desire to do this, that, without once thinking how rude it would be to leave her guests, she slipped away down a private staircase that led to this forbidden closet, and in such a hurry, that she was two or three times in danger of falling down stairs and breaking her neck.

When she reached the door of the closet, she stopped for a few moments to think of the order her husband had given her, and how he had told her that he would not fail to keep his word and punish her very severely, if she did not obey him. But she was so very curious to know what was inside, that she made up her mind to venture in spite of every thing. 

She then, with a trembling hand, put the key into the lock, and the door straight flew open. As the window shutters were closed, she at first could see nothing; but in a short time she saw that the floor was covered with clotted blood, on which the bodies of several dead women were lying.

These were all the wives whom Blue Beard had married, and killed one after another. At this sight she was ready to sink with fear, and the key of the closet door, which she held in her hand, fell on the floor.

 When she had a little got the better of her fright, she took it up, locked the door, and made haste back to her own room, that she might have a little time to get into a humour to amuse her company; but this she could not do, so great was her fright at what she had seen. 

As she found that the key of the closet had got stained with blood in falling on the floor, she wiped it two or three times over to clean it; 

yet still the blood kept on it the same as before. She next washed it, but the blood did not move at all. She then scoured it with brick dust, and after with sand, but in spite of all she could do, the blood was still there; for the key was a fairy who was Blue Beard’s friend; so that as fast as she got off the blood on one side, it came again on the other. 

Early in the same evening Blue Beard came home, saying, that before he had gone far on his journey he was met by a horseman, who was coming to tell him that his affair in the country was settled without his being present; upon which his wife said every thing she could think of, to make him believe she was in a transport of joy at his sudden return.

The next morning he asked her for the keys: she gave them to him; but as she could not help showing her fright, Blue Beard easily guessed what had been the matter. “How is it,” said he, “that the key of the closet upon the ground floor is not here?” “Is it not?” said the wife, “then I must have left it on my dressing-table.”

 “Be sure you give it me by and by,” replied Blue Beard. 

After going a good many times backwards and forwards, as if she was looking for the key, she was at last forced to give it to Blue Beard. He looked hard at it, and then said: “How came this blood upon the key?” “I am sure I do not know,” replied the poor lady, at the same time turning as white as a sheet. “You do not know?” said Blue Beard sternly, “but I know well enough. 

You have been in the closet on the ground floor! 

Very well, madam: since you are so mighty fond of this closet, you shall be sure to take your place among the ladies you saw there.” His wife, who was almost dead with fear, now fell upon her knees, asked his pardon a thousand times for her fault, and begged him to forgive her, looking all the time so very mournful and lovely, that she would have melted any heart that was not harder than a rock. 

But Blue Beard only said, “No, no, madam; you shall die this very minute!” “Alas!” said the poor trembling creature, 

“if I must die, give me, as least, a little time to say my prayers.”

 “I give you,” replied the cruel Blue Beard, “half a quarter of an hour: 

not a moment longer.” 

When Blue Beard had left her to herself, she called her sister; and after telling her, as well as she could for sobbing, that she had but half a quarter of an hour to live; “Prithee,” said she, “sister Anne,” (this was her sister’s name), “run up to the top of the tower, and see if my brothers are not in sight, for they said they would visit me to-day, and if you see them, make a sign for them to gallop on as fast as ever they can.” Her sister straight did as she was desired; and the poor trembling lady every minute cried out to her: “Anne! sister Anne! do you see any one coming?” 

Her sister said, “I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass, which looks green.”

In the meanwhile, Blue Beard, with a great cimeter in his hand, bawled as loud as he could to his wife, “Come down at once, or I will fetch you.” “One moment longer, I beseech you,” replied she, and again called softly to her sister, “Sister Anne, 

do you see any one coming?” To which she answered, “I see nothing but the sun, which makes a dust, and the grass, which looks green.” Blue Beard now again bawled out, “Come down, I say, this very moment, or I shall come to fetch you.” 

“I am coming; indeed I will come in one minute,” sobbed his wretched wife. 

Then she once more cried out, “Anne! sister Anne! do you see any one coming?” 

“I see,” said her sister, “a cloud of dust a little to the left.” “Do you think it is my brothers?” said the wife. “Alas! no, dear sister,” replied she, “it is only a flock of sheep.” “Will you come down, madam?” said Blue Beard, in the greatest rage. 

“Only one single moment more,” said she. And then she called out for the last time, “Sister Anne! sister Anne! do you see no one coming?” “I see,” replied her sister, “two men on horseback coming; but they are still a great way off.” “Thank God,” cried she, “they are my brothers; beckon them to make haste.” Blue Beard now cried out so loud for her to come down, that his voice shook the whole house. 

The poor lady, with her hair loose, and all in tears, now came down, and fell on her knees, begging him to spare her life; but he stopped her, saying, “All this is of no use, for you shall die,” and then, seizing her by the hair, raised his cimeter to strike off her head. The poor woman now begged a single moment to say one prayer. 

“No, no,” said Blue Beard, “I will give you no more time. You have had too much already.” And again he raised his arm. Just at this instant a loud knocking was heard at the gates, which made Blue Beard wait for a moment to see who it was. 

The gates now flew open, and two officers, dressed in their uniform, came in, and, with their swords in their hands, ran straight to Blue Beard, who, seeing they were his wife’s brothers, tried to escape from their presence; but they pursued and seized him before he had gone twenty steps, and plunging their swords into his body he fell down dead at their feet.

The poor wife, who was almost as dead as her husband, was not able at first to rise and embrace her brothers; but she soon came to herself; and, as Blue Beard had no heirs, she found herself the owner of his great riches. 

She gave a part of his vast fortune as a marriage dowry 

to her sister Anne, who soon after became the wife of 

a young gentleman who had long loved her. 

Some of the money she laid out in buying captains’ commissions for her two brothers, and the rest she gave to a worthy gentleman whom she married shortly after, 

and whose kind treatment soon made her forget Blue Beard’s cruelty.

Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics BLUEBEARD (Part 1/2)

(Learn English through stories) Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe - Level 1,4 / Berenice horor + četba z knihy CZ

Berenice

 Berenice by Edgar Allan Poe

Egaeus is my name.
My family - I will not name it - is one of the oldest in the land.
We have lived here, inside the walls of this great house, for many hundreds of years.I sometimes walk through its silent rooms.

Each one is richly decorated, by the hands of only the finest workmen.
But my favourite has always been the library.
It is here, among books, that I have always spent most of my time.

My mother died in the library; I was born here.
Yes, the world heard my first cries here; and these walls, the books that stand along them are among the first things I can remember in my life.

I was born here in this room, but my life did not begin here. 

I know I lived another life before the one I am living now. 

I can remember another time, like a dream without shape or body: a world of eyes, sweet sad sounds and silent shadows.

I woke up from that long night, my eyes opened, and I saw the light of day again - here in this room full of thoughts and dreams.
As a child, I spent my days reading in this library, and my young days dreaming here.

The years passed, I grew up without noticing it, and soon I found that I was no longer young.
I was already in the middle of my life, and I was still living here in the house of my fathers.

I almost never left the house, and I left the library less and less. 

And so, slowly, the real world - life in the world outside these walls - began to seem like a dream to me.
The wild ideas, the dreams inside my head were my real world.

They were my whole life. Berenice and I were cousins.
She and I grew up together here in this house.
But we grew so differently.
I was the weak one, so often sick, always lost in my dark and heavy thoughts.
She was the strong, healthy one, always so full of life, always shining like a bright new sun.

She ran over the hills under the great blue sky while I studied in the library.
I lived inside the walls of my mind, fighting with the most difficult and painful ideas.
She walked quickly and happily through life, never thinking of the shadows around her. I watched our young years flying away on the silent wings of time.

Berenice never thought of tomorrow. She lived only for the day.
Berenice - I call out her name - Berenice! 

And a thousand sweet voices answer me from the past.
I can see her clearly now, as she was in her early days of beauty and light.
I see her... and then suddenly all is darkness, mystery and fear.

Her bright young days ended when an illness - a terrible illness - came down on her like a sudden storm.I watched the dark cloud pass over her.
I saw it change her body and mind completely. 

The cloud came and went, leaving someone I did not know.
Who was this sad person I saw now? 

Where was my Berenice, the Berenice I once knew?

This first illness caused several other illnesses to follow.
One of these was a very unusual type of epilepsy. This epilepsy always came suddenly, without warning.Suddenly, her mind stopped working.

She fell to the ground, red in the face, shaking all over, making strange sounds, her eyes not seeing any more.
The epilepsy often ended with her going into a kind of very deep sleep.
Sometimes, this sleep was so deep that it was difficult to tell if she was dead or not.

Often she woke up from the sleep as suddenly as the epilepsy began.
She would just get up again as if nothing was wrong.
It was during this time that my illness began to get worse.
I felt it growing stronger day by day.
I knew I could do nothing to stop it.
And soon, like Berenice, my illness changed my life completely.

It was not my body that was sick; it was my mind. It was an illness of the mind.
I can only describe it as a type of monomania. I often lost myself for hours, deep in thought about something - something so unimportant that it seemed funny afterwards.

But I am afraid it may be impossible to describe how fully I could lose myself in the useless study of even the simplest or most ordinary object.
I could sit for hours looking at one letter of a word on a page.

I could stay, for most of a summer's day, watching a shadow on the floor.
I could sit without taking my eyes off a wood fire in winter, until it burnt away to nothing.
I could sit for a whole night dreaming about the sweet smell of a flower.
I often repeated a single word again and again for hours until the sound of it had no more meaning for me.

When I did these things, I always lost all idea of myself, all idea of time, of movement, even of being alive.
There must be no mistake.
You must understand that this monomania was not a kind of dreaming.
Dreaming is completely different.
The dreamer -I am talking about the dreamer who is awake, not asleep - needs and uses the mind to build his dream.

Also, the dreamer nearly always forgets the thought or idea or object that began his dream.
But with me, the object that began the journey into deepest thought always stayed in my mind.
The object was always there at the centre of my thinking.
It was the centre of everything.
It was both the subject and the object of my thoughts.

My thoughts always, always came back to that object in a never-ending circle.
The object was no longer real, but still I could not pull myself away from it!
I never loved Berenice, even during the brightest days of her beauty.
This is because I have never had feelings of the heart. 

My loves have always been in the world of the mind.
In the grey light of early morning, among the dancing shadows of the forest, in the silence of my library at night, Berenice moved quickly and lightly before my eyes.

I never saw my Berenice as a living Berenice.
For me, Berenice was a Berenice in a dream.
She was not a person of this world - no, I never thought of her as someone real. Berenice was the idea of Berenice.
She was something to think about, not someone to love.
And so why did I feel differently after her illness?
Why, when she was so terribly and sadly changed, did I shake and go white when she came near me?

Because I saw the terrible waste of that sweet and loving person.
Because now there was nothing left of the Berenice I once knew!
It is true I never loved her.
But I knew she always loved me - deeply. And so, one day - because I felt so sorry for her - I had a stupid and evil idea. I asked her to marry me.

Our wedding day was growing closer, and one warm afternoon I was sitting in the library.
The clouds were low and dark, the air was heavy, everything was quiet. 

Suddenly, lifting my eyes from my book, I saw Berenice standing in front of me.
She was like a stranger to me, only a weak shadow of the woman I remembered.

I could not even remember how she was before.
God, she was so thin! I could see her arms and legs through the grey clothes that hung round her wasted body.
She said nothing.
And I could not speak.
I do not know why, but suddenly I felt a terrible fear pressing down like a great stone on my heart.

I sat there in my chair, too afraid to move.
Her long hair fell around her face.
She was as white as snow.
She looked strangely calm and happy.
But there was no life at all in her eyes.

They did not even seem to see me.
I watched as her thin, bloodless lips slowly opened.
They made a strange smile that I could not understand.
And it was then that I saw the teeth.

Oh, why did she have to smile at me! Why did I have to see those teeth?
I heard a door closing and I looked up.
Berenice was not there any more.
The room was empty.
But her teeth did not leave the room of my mind!
I now saw them more clearly than when she was standing in front of me.
Every smallest part of each tooth was burnt into my mind.
The teeth! There they were in front of my eyes - here, there, everywhere I looked. And they were so white, with her bloodless lips always moving round them!

I tried to fight this sudden, terrible monomania, but it was useless.
All I could think about, all I could see in my mind's eye was the teeth.
They were now the centre of my life.
I held them up in my mind's eye, looked at them in every light, turned them every way.

I studied their shapes, their differences; and the more I thought about them, 

the more I began to want them.
Yes, I wanted them! I had to have the teeth! 

Only the teeth could bring me happiness, could stop me from going mad.

Evening came; then darkness turned into another day; soon a second night was falling, and I sat there alone, never moving.
I was still lost in thought, in that one same thought: the teeth.
I saw them everywhere I looked - in the evening shadows, in the darkness in front of my eyes.

Then a terrible cry of horror woke me from my dreams.
I heard voices, and more cries of sadness and pain.
I got up and opened the door of the library.
A servant girl was standing outside, crying.

'Your cousin, sir' she began.
'It was her epilepsy, sir. She died this morning.'
This morning? I looked out of the window. Night was falling...
'We are ready to bury her now,' said the girl.
I found myself waking up alone in the library again.
I thought that I could remember unpleasant and excited dreams, 

but I did not know what they were.
It was midnight.

'They buried Berenice soon after dark,' I told myself again and again.
But I could only half-remember the hours since then - hours full of a terrible unknown horror.

I knew something happened during the night, but I could not remember what it was: those hours of the night were like a page of strange writing that I could not understand.

Next, I heard the high cutting scream of a woman.
I remember thinking: 'What did I do?
I asked myself this question out loud.
And the walls of the library answered me in a soft voice like mine: What did you do?
There was a lamp on the table near me, with a small box next to it. 

I knew this box well - it belonged to our family's doctor.

But why was it there, now, on the table? 

And why was I shaking like a leaf as I looked at it? 
Why was my hair standing on my head?
There was a knock on the door.
A servant came in.
He was wild with fear and spoke to me quickly, in a low, shaking voice.
I could not understand all of what he was saying.

'Some of us heard a wild cry during the night, sir' he said.
We went to find out what it was, and we found Berenice's body lying in the open, sir!' he cried.
'Someone took her out of the hole where we buried her! 

Her body was cut and bleeding! 

But worse than that, she... she was not dead, sir! She was still alive!
He pointed at my clothes.

There was blood all over them.
I said nothing.
He took my hand.
I saw cuts and dried blood on it.
I cried out, jumped to the table and tried to open the box.
I tried and tried but I could not! It fell to the floor and broke.
Dentist's tools fell out of it, and with them - so small and so white! - thirty-two teeth fell here, there, everywhere...