The story opens with a quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, as translated by Edward FitzGerald (1859 translation, archived by Project Gutenberg), which reads:

Oh, thou who burn’st in heart for those who burn

in Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn;

How long be crying—‘Mercy on them.’ God!

Why, who are thou to teach and He to learn? (45).

The unnamed first-person narrator sits in the Church of St. Barnabe, in Paris, where he listens to the priest’s sermon while the organ plays in the background. He feels the sound of the organ makes a “sinister change” that is discordant, and harsh. The sensation is so troubling that he idly wonders if some evil spirit has possessed the church. But the other churchgoers do not appear disturbed, or even to have noticed any music at all. The priest continues his sermon and asks for silence, and the narrator takes refuge in the quiet. He concludes he must be overreacting because he is tired, having stayed awake for “three nights of physical suffering and mental trouble” (46) while reading The King in Yellow.

He sees the organist leave the chapel. However, a moment later, he sees the same man leave along the same route again, though he is certain the organist could not have doubled back without him noticing.