The Gold Bug
[adapted]
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Many years ago I became close friends with a Mr. William Legrand. He was from an old Huguenot (French Protestants, many of whom settled in South Carolina) family, and had once been rich; but a series of bad luck had made him poor. To avoid the shame that followed his troubles, he left New Orleans, the city of his ancestors, and went to live at Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
This island is a very unusual one. It is made of little more than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its width is nowhere more than a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a barely visible creek, moving slowly through a wild area of reeds and mud, a place where the marsh-hen likes to stay. The plants, as might be supposed, are few, or at least small. No trees of any large size are to be seen. Near the western end, where Fort Moultrie (Built in 1776, defended against the British by Colonel William Moultrie) stands, and where there are some poor wooden buildings, lived in, during summer, by the people who run away from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the spiky palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a thick undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much liked by the gardeners of England. The shrub here often reaches the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impossible to pass thicket, filling the air with its sweet smell.
In the deepest parts of this small wood, not far from the eastern or farther end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he lived in when I first, by mere chance, met him. This soon grew into friendship, for there was much in the man who lived alone to create interest and respect. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but affected by a dislike of people, and with strange moods of changing enthusiasm and sadness. He had with him many books, but rarely used them. His main amusements were shooting and fishing, or walking slowly along the beach and through the myrtles, in search of shells or insect specimens — his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdam. (A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680)) In these trips he was usually joined by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been freed before the bad times of the family, but who could be made, neither by threats nor by promises, to give up what he thought was his right to follow the footsteps of his young “Massa Will.” It is not unlikely that the relatives of Legrand, thinking him to be somewhat not steady in mind, had managed to put this stubbornness into Jupiter, so that he would watch and guard the wanderer.
The winters in the area of Sullivan’s Island are rarely very severe, and in the autumn it is a very rare event indeed when a fire is thought necessary. About the middle of October, 18 — , there was, however, a day of very cold weather. Just before sunset I made my way through the evergreen trees to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks — I was living at that time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the means of going and coming back were very far behind those of the present day. When I reached the hut I knocked, as I usually did, and getting no reply, looked for the key where I knew it was hidden, unlocked the door, and went in. A good fire was burning on the hearth. It was something new, and not at all unwelcome. I took off an overcoat, sat in an armchair by the crackling logs, and waited patiently for my hosts to come.
Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a very warm welcome. Jupiter, smiling widely, hurried around to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits — what else should I call them? — of excitement. He had found an unknown two-shelled shellfish, making a new kind, and, more than this, he had chased and caught, with Jupiter’s help, a scarabaeus (The Latin for beetle) which he believed to be totally new, but about which he wanted to have my opinion the next day.
“And why not tonight?” I asked, rubbing my hands over the fire, and wishing the whole group of scarabs to the devil.
“Ah, if I had only known you were here!” said Legrand, “but it’s been so long since I saw you; and how could I know that you would visit me this very night, of all nights? As I was coming home I met Lieutenant G —— , from the fort, and, without thinking, I lent him the bug; so you cannot see it until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sunrise. It is the most beautiful thing in the world!”
“What! — sunrise?”
“Nonsense! no! — the bug. It is a bright gold color — about the size of a large hickory-nut — with two very black spots near one end of the back, and another, a little longer, at the other. The antennae (The feelers) are — ”
“There is no tin in him, Master Will, I keep telling you,” here interrupted Jupiter; “the bug is a gold bug, solid, every bit of him, inside and all, except his wing — never felt half so heavy a bug in my life.”
“Well, suppose it is, Jup,” replied Legrand, a bit more seriously, it seemed to me, than needed; “is that any reason to let the birds burn? The color” — here he turned to me — “is really almost enough to prove Jupiter’s idea. You never saw a brighter metal shine than the scales give off — but you cannot judge this until tomorrow. Meanwhile I can give you some idea of the shape.” Saying this, he sat down at a small table, which had a pen and ink on it, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none.
“Never mind,” he said after a while, “this will do;” and he took from his vest pocket a scrap of what I thought was very dirty paper, and made a rough drawing on it with a pen. While he did this, I stayed in my seat by the fire, for I was still cold. When the drawing was complete, he handed it to me without getting up. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, followed by a scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland dog, that belonged to Legrand, rushed in, jumped upon my shoulders, and covered me with licks; for I had been very kind to him during earlier visits. When his play was over, I looked at the paper, and, to tell the truth, I was very puzzled at what my friend had drawn.
“Well!” I said, after looking at it for some minutes, “this is a strange beetle, I must say: new to me: never saw anything like it before — unless it was a skull, or a death’s-head — which it looks more like than anything else that I have seen.”
“A skull!” repeated Legrand. “Oh — yes — well, it looks a bit like that on paper, for sure. The two top black spots look like eyes, right? and the longer one at the bottom looks like a mouth — and then the shape of the whole thing is oval.”
“Maybe so,” I said; “but, Legrand, I am afraid you are not an artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am going to get any idea of how it looks.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said he, a little annoyed, “I draw fairly well — should do it at least — have had good teachers, and like to think that I am not quite a fool.”
“But, my dear fellow, you are joking then,” said I; “this is a very good skull — indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the common ideas about such examples in the study of the body — and your scarabaeus must be the strangest scarabaeus in the world if it looks like it. Why, we could make a very exciting little superstition from this idea. I suppose, you will call the bug scarabaeus caput hominis, (Man’s-head beetle) or something like that — there are many similar names in the natural history books. But where are the antennae you spoke of?”
“The antennae!” said Legrand, who seemed to be getting very excited about it; “I am sure you must see the antennae. I made them as clear as they are in the real insect, and I think that is enough.”
“Well, well,” I said, “perhaps you have — still I don’t see them;” and I gave him the paper without any more comment, not wanting to make him angry; but I was very surprised at how things had gone; his bad mood confused me — and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were really no feelers to be seen, and the whole really looked very much like the common pictures of a skull.
He took the paper angrily, and was about to scrunch it up, it seemed, to throw it in the fire, when a quick look at the drawing suddenly caught his attention. At once his face grew very red — in another moment very pale. For some minutes he continued to look at the drawing very closely where he sat. At last he got up, took a candle from the table, and went to sit down on a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he took a worried, careful look at the paper, turning it in all directions. He said nothing, however, and his behavior surprised me very much; yet I thought it wise not to make his growing bad mood worse by saying anything.
Soon he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and put both in a writing desk, which he locked. He now became calmer in his behavior; but his first look of excitement had completely gone. Yet he seemed not so much in a bad mood as lost in thought. As the evening went on he became more and more lost in daydreams, from which no jokes of mine could wake him. It had been my plan to spend the night at the hut, as I had often done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I thought it right to say goodbye. He did not urge me to stay, but, as I left, he shook my hand with even more than his usual warmth.
It was about a month after this (and during the time I had seen nothing of Legrand) when I had a visit, at Charleston, from his servant Jupiter. I had never seen the good old Black man look so very sad, and I feared that something very bad had happened to my friend.
“Well, Jup,” I said, “what is wrong now? — how is your boss?”
“Why, to speak the truth, master, he is not so very well as might be.”
“Not well! I am very sorry to hear that. What is he complaining about?”
“There! that’s it! — he never complains about anything — but he is very sick even so.”
“Very sick, Jupiter! — why didn’t you say so right away? Is he stuck in bed?”
“No, he is not! — he is not anywhere — that is the problem — I am very worried about poor Master Will.”
“Jupiter, I want to understand what you are talking about. You say your master is sick. Hasn’t he told you what is wrong with him?”
“Why, master, it isn’t worth it to get mad about the matter — Master Will says nothing at all is the matter with him — but then what makes him go about looking this here way, with his head down and his shoulders up, and as white as a ghost? And then he keeps sighing all the time — ”
“Keeps what, Jupiter?”
“Keeps a code with the figures on the slate — the strangest figures I ever did see. I am getting to be scared, I tell you. Have to keep a very close eye on his maneuvers. The other day he slipped away from me before the sun was up, and was gone the whole of the blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut to give him a d —— d good beating when he did come — but I am such a fool that I did not have the heart after all — he looked so very poorly.”
“Eh? — what? Ah, yes! — in general, I think you should not be too hard with the poor guy — don’t whip him, Jupiter, he can’t really take it — but do you know what has caused this sickness, or rather this change of behavior? Has anything bad happened since I saw you?”
“No, master, there has not been anything bad since then — it was before then, I’m afraid — it was the very day you were there.”
“How? what do you mean?”
“Why, master, I mean the bug — there now.”
“The what?”
“The bug — I am very sure that Master Will was bitten somewhere around the head by that gold-bug.”
“And what reason do you have, Jupiter, for such a guess?”
“Claws enough, master, and mouth, too. I never did see such a terrible bug — he kicks and he bites everything that comes near him. Master Will caught him first, but had to let him go again very quickly, I tell you — then was the time he must have got the bite. I didn’t like the look of the bug’s mouth, myself, anyway, so I wouldn’t take hold of him with my finger, but I caught him with a piece of paper that I found. I wrapped him up in the paper and stuffed a piece of it in his mouth — that was the way.”
“And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him sick?” “I don’t think anything about it — I know it. What makes him dream about the gold so much, if it isn’t because he was bitten by the gold-bug? I have heard about those gold-bugs before this.”
“But how do you know he dreams about gold?”
“How do I know? Why, because he talks about it in his sleep — that’s how I know.”
“Well, Jup, maybe you are right; but what lucky reason gives me the honor of a visit from you today?”
“What is wrong, sir?”
“Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand?”
“No, master, I bring this letter;” and here Jupiter gave me a note, which said this:
My dear ——— :
Why have I not seen you for so long a time? I hope you have not been so foolish as to get upset at any little rudeness of mine; but no, that is not likely.
Since I saw you I have been very worried. I have something to tell you, but I hardly know how to say it, or if I should tell it at all.
...I have not been very well for the past few days, and poor old Jup annoys me, almost more than I can stand, by his kind attentions. Would you believe it? — he had prepared a huge stick, the other day, with which to punish me for running away from him, and spending the day, alone, among the hills on the mainland. I truly believe that my ill looks alone saved me from a beating.
I have added nothing to my collection since we met.
If you can, in any way, make it easy, come over with Jupiter. Do come. I want to see you tonight, about important business. I promise you that it is very important.
Always yours,
