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    The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar
    The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar
    The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar
    Ebook51 pages48 minutes

    The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar

    By H. P. Lovecraft

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    High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mound whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest, stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honoured line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks on Demand
    Release dateApr 15, 2019
    ISBN9783749453351
    The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar
    Author

    H. P. Lovecraft

    Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

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      Book preview

      The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar - H. P. Lovecraft

      The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar

      The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar

      The Alchemist

      Azathoth

      The Beast in the Cave

      Beyond the Wall of Sleep

      The Book

      The Cats of Ulthar

      Copyright

      The Alchemist, Azathoth, The Beast in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Cats of Ulthar

      H. P. Lovecraft

      The Alchemist

      High up, crowning the grassy summit of a swelling mound whose sides are wooded near the base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest, stands the old chateau of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold for the proud house whose honoured line is older even than the moss-grown castle walls. These ancient turrets, stained by the storms of generations and crumbling under the slow yet mighty pressure of time, formed in the ages of feudalism one of the most dreaded and formidable fortresses in all France. From its machicolated parapets and mounted battlements Barons, Counts, and even Kings had been defied, yet never had its spacious halls resounded to the footsteps of the invader.

      But since those glorious years all is changed. A poverty but little above the level of dire want, together with a pride of name that forbids its alleviation by the pursuits of commercial life, have prevented the scions of our line from maintaining their estates in pristine splendour; and the falling stones of the walls, the overgrown vegetation in the parks, the dry and dusty moat, the ill-paved courtyards, and toppling towers without, as well as the sagging floors, the worm-eaten wainscots, and the faded tapestries within, all tell a gloomy tale of fallen grandeur. As the ages passed, first one, then another of the four great turrets were left to ruin, until at last but a single tower housed the sadly reduced descendants of the once mighty lords of the estate.

      It was in one of the vast and gloomy chambers of this remaining tower that I, Antoine, last of the unhappy and accursed Comtes de C——, first saw the light of day, ninety long years ago. Within these walls, and amongst the dark and shadowy forests, the wild ravines and grottoes of the hillside below, were spent the first years of my troubled life. My parents I never knew. My father had been killed at the age of thirty-two, a month before I was born, by the fall of a stone somehow dislodged from one of the deserted parapets of the castle; and my mother having died at my birth, my care and education devolved solely upon one remaining servitor, an old and trusted man of considerable intelligence, whose name I remember as Pierre. I was an only child, and the lack of companionship which this fact entailed upon me was augmented by the strange care exercised by my aged guardian in excluding me from the society of the peasant children whose abodes were scattered here and there upon the plains that surround the base of the hill. At the time, Pierre said that this restriction was imposed upon me because my noble birth placed me above association with such plebeian company. Now I know that its real object was to keep from my ears the idle tales of the dread curse upon our line, that were nightly told and magnified by the simple tenantry as they conversed in hushed accents in the glow of their cottage hearths.

      Thus isolated, and thrown upon my own resources, I spent the hours of my childhood in poring over the ancient tomes that filled the shadow-haunted library of the chateau, and in roaming without aim or purpose through the perpetual dusk of the spectral wood that clothes the side of the hill near its foot. It was

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