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The Black Cat - Contenido educativo
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For the most wild yet homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.
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Mad indeed would I be to expect it in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.
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Yet tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul.
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From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my character.
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I was especially fond of animals, and was never so happy as when feeding and caressing them.
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I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.
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Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind.
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Pluto, my favourite pet and playmate, was a remarkably large and beautiful cat, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.
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That friendship lasted for several years, during which, I blush to confess, my general temperament experienced radical alteration for the worse.
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By and by, even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill-temper.
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One night I fancied that the cat avoided my presence.
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The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I took from my waistcoat pocket a penknife and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket.
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When reason returned with the morning, I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, but it was, at best, an equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched.
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At first, I had so much of my old heart left as to be grieved by the animal's avoidance, but this feeling soon gave place to the spirit of perverseness.
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It was this longing of the soul to vex itself that urged me to finally consummate the injury I'd inflicted upon the unoffending brute.
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One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree.
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Hung it because I knew that it had loved me, because, in doing so, I was committing a deadly sin that would place my immortal soul even beyond the reach of the most merciful God.
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For months, I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat, and there came back into my spirit a vague sentiment of remorse.
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One night, as I called upon one of my frequent horns, my attention was suddenly drawn to some object in the darkness.
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It was a black cat, closely resembling Pluto in every respect, save a splotch of white upon the animal's breast.
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Upon my touching him, he immediately arose and purred loudly.
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The cat even evinced a disposition to accompany me home, becoming an immediate favorite with my wife.
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For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me.
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With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase.
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Alas, neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of rest anymore.
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I started hourly from dreams of unutterable fear to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face and its vast white incumbent eternally upon my heart.
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Beneath the pressure of such torments, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed.
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The moodiness of my usual temper increased to ungovernable outbursts of fury, of which my wife was the most patient of sufferers.
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One day, as she accompanied me down the steep steps to the cellar, the cat, nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness.
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Uplifting an axe, I aimed a blow at the animal, but was arrested by the hand of my wife.
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Goaded into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain.
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This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself to the task of concealing the body.
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Determined to wall it up in the cellar, as the monks of the Middle Ages are said to have walled up their victims.
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My next step was to look for the beast which had caused so much wretchedness, yet it appeared that the animal, alarmed at my previous anger, had fled.
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Thus, for one night, I tranquilly slept, even with the burden of murder upon my soul.
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Two days passed, and still I breathed a free man.
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Upon the fourth day, a party of police arrived to investigate the premises.
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I quivered not a muscle. The police were satisfied and prepared to depart, yet I burned to say if but one word by way of triumph.
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Gentlemen, I delight to have allayed your suspicions. By the by, this, this is a very well constructed house.
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No sooner had the reverberation of my blow sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb.
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By a cry at first, like the sobbing of a child, then quickly swelling into one loud and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and ensuing.
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Upon the corpse's head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman.
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I had walled the monster up within the tomb.
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To be continued...
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- Subido por:
- Francisco Javier P.
- Licencia:
- Reconocimiento - No comercial - Compartir igual
- Visualizaciones:
- 26
- Fecha:
- 3 de noviembre de 2022 - 16:04
- Visibilidad:
- Público
- Centro:
- CPR INF-PRI-SEC SANTÍSIMA TRINIDAD
- Duración:
- 06′ 20″
- Relación de aspecto:
- 4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
- Resolución:
- 480x360 píxeles
- Tamaño:
- 13.94 MBytes
