Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima.
I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me
mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest
intelligence --- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound --- does not
spring from disease of thought --- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the
general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape
those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and
thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In
snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere
knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the
vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian
geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."
We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions
of my mental existence --- the condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and
belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life --- and a condition
of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what
constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier
period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may
seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the
Oedipus.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these
remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed.
Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical
sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that
vale; for it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around about it,
shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was trodden in its vicinity;
and, to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back, with force, the foliage of
many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of
fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world
without the valley --- I, and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain,
there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and,
winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy
gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River
of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from
its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to
gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in
its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
