The Black Cat

my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul.

its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed me. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred.

Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?

ut to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.

ut to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul

Evil thoughts became my sole intimates—the darkest and most evil of thoughts.

, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the Gallows

There was a rope about the animal's neck.

I approached and saw, as if graven in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat.