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Metzengerstein  (1832)

by  Edgar Allan Poe

An occurrence so common attracted no particular attention, but his return was looked for with intense anxiety on the part of his domestics, when, after some hours absence, the stupendous, and magnificent battlements of the Chateau Metzengerstein were discovered crackling, and rocking to their very foundation, under the influence of a dense, and livid mass of ungovernable fire. As the flames, when first seen, had already made so terrible a progress, that all efforts to save any portion of the building were evidently futile, the astonished neighbourhood stood idly around in silent, and apathetic wonder. But a new, and fearful object soon rivetted the attention of the multitude, and proved the vast superiority of excitement which the sight of human agony exercises in the feelings of a crowd, above the most appalling spectacles of inanimate matter.