Page:Edgar Poe and his critics.djvu/76

 in crime which it delineates, and which becomes at last involuntary, reminds us of the subterranean staircase by which Vathek and Nouronihar reached the Hall of Eblis, where, as they descended, they felt their steps frightfully accelerated till they seemed falling from a precipice.

Poe’s private letters to his friends offer abundant evidence that he was not insensible to the keenest pangs of remorse. Again and again did he say to the Demon that tracked his path, “Anathema Maranatha,” but again and again did it return to torture and subdue. He saw the handwriting on the wall but had no power to avert the impending doom.

In relation to this, the fatal temptation of his life, he says, in a letter written within a year of his death, “The agonies which I have lately endured have passed my soul through fire. Henceforth I am strong. This those who love me shall know as well as those who have so relentlessly sought to ruin me.＊＊＊＊I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in