Chapter 253

240 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE the family palace of Metzengerstein. The rich although faded tapestry hangings which swung gloomily upon the walls, represented the shadowy and majestic fqrms of a thousand illustrious ancestors. Here, rich-ermined priests and pontifical dignitaries, familiarly seated with the autocrat and the sovereign, put a veto on the wishes of a temporal king, or restrained with the fiat of papal supremacy the rebellious scepter of the Arch-enemy. There, the dark tall statures of the Prince Metzengerstein — their muscular war-coursers plunging over the carcases of fallen foes — startled the steadiest nerves with their vigorous expression; and here again, the voluptuous and swan-like figures of the dames of days gone by floated away in the mazes of an unreal dance to the strains of imaginary melody. But as the Baron listened or affected to listen to the gradually increasing uproar in the stables of Berlifitzing — or perhaps pondered upon some more novel, some more decided act of audacity — his eyes were turned unwittingly to the figure of an enormous and unnaturally colored horse, represented in the tapestry as belonging to a Saracen ancestor of the family of his rival. The horse itself, in the foreground of the design, stood motionless and statue-like — while farther back, its discomfited rider perished by the dagger of a Metzengerstein. On Frederick’s lip arose a fiendish expression as he became aware of the direction which his glance had, without his consciousness, assumed. Yet he did not remove it. On the contrary, he could by no means account for the overwhelming anxiety which appeared falling like a pall upon his senses. It was with difficulty that he reconciled his dreamy and incoherent feelings with the certainty of being awake. The longer he gazed the more absorbing became the spell — the more impossible did it appear that he could ever withdraw his glance from the facination of that tapestry. But the tumult without