Close curtains were around it, which, in the
prosecution of my plan, I slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright
rays fell vividly upon the sleeper, and my eyes at the same moment
upon his countenance. I looked,--and a numbness, an iciness of
feeling, instantly pervaded my frame. My breast heaved, my knees
tottered, my whole spirit became possessed with an objectless yet
intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I lowered the lamp in still
nearer proximity to the face. Were these,--_these_ the lineaments of
William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his, but I shook as if
with a fit of the ague, in fancying they were not. What _was_ there
about them to confound me in this manner? I gazed,--while my brain
reeled with a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he
appeared--assuredly not _thus_--in the vivacity of his waking
hours. The same name! the same contour of person! the same day of
arrival at the academy! And then his dogged and meaningless imitation
of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my manner! Was it, in truth,
within the bounds of human possibility, that _what I now saw_ was the
result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic imitation?
Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the lamp,
passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that
old academy, never to enter them again.
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