"A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

We looked at the picture which he presented. I saw nothing in it
of an extraordinary character, but its effect upon Bedloe was
prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a
miniature portrait- a miraculously accurate one, to be sure- of his
own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I
regarded it.
"You will perceive," said Templeton, "the date of this picture- it
is here, scarcely visible, in this corner- 1780. In this year was
the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead friend- a Mr.
Oldeb- to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the
administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty years old.
When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the miraculous
similarity which existed between yourself and the painting which
induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship, and to bring
about those arrangements which resulted in my becoming your constant
companion. In accomplishing this point, I was urged partly, and
perhaps principally, by a regretful memory of the deceased, but
also, in part, by an uneasy, and not altogether horrorless curiosity
respecting yourself.
"In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid the
hills, you have described, with the minutest accuracy, the Indian city
of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the combat, the
massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing,
which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put in imminent peril of
his life. The man escaping by the string of turbans was Cheyte Sing
himself. The party in the kiosk were sepoys and British officers,
headed by Hastings. Of this party I was one, and did all I could to
prevent the rash and fatal sally of the officer who fell, in the
crowded alleys, by the poisoned arrow of a Bengalee. That officer
was my dearest friend. It was Oldeb. You will perceive by these
manuscripts," (here the speaker produced a note-book in which
several pages appeared to have been freshly written,) "that at the
very period in which you fancied these things amid the hills, I was
engaged in detailing them upon paper here at home."
In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs
appeared in a Charlottesville paper:
"We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr. Augustus
Bedlo, a gentleman whose amiable manners and many virtues have long
endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville.
"Mr. B., for some years past, has been subject to neuralgia, which
has often threatened to terminate fatally; but this can be regarded
only as the mediate cause of his decease. The proximate cause was
one of especial singularity. In an excursion to the Ragged
Mountains, a few days since, a slight cold and fever were
contracted, attended with great determination of blood to the head. To
relieve this, Dr. Templeton resorted to topical bleeding. Leeches were
applied to the temples. In a fearfully brief period the patient
died, when it appeared that in the jar containing the leeches, had
been introduced, by accident, one of the venomous vermicular
sangsues which are now and then found in the neighboring ponds. This