THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
By Edgar Allen Poe

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had

ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal

-- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and

sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with

dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the

face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid

and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure,

progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half

an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When

his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a

thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and

dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of

one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent

structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august

taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of

iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy

hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of

ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from

within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the

courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could

take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to

think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There

were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers,

there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and

security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,

and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince

Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the

most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of

the rooms in which it was held. There were seven -- an imperial

suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight

vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on

either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely

impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been

expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so

irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than

one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty

yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the

middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon

a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These

windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with

the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it

opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue

-- and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple

in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The

third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was

furnished and lighted with orange -- the fifth with white -- the

sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in

black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the

walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and

hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to

correspond with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet -- a

deep blood color. Now in no one of the seven apartments was there any

lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay

scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of

any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers.

But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite

to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that

protected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly

illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and

fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect

of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the

blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild

a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were

few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at

all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western

wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a

dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the

circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from

the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and

deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis

that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were

constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken

to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions;

and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while

the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest

grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their

brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes

had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the

musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own

nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,

that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar

emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace

three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there

came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same

disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.

The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors

and effects. He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans

were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster.

There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt

that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be

sure that he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the

seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fete; and it was his own

guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure

they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy

and phantasm -- much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There

were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There

were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of

the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of

the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited

disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a

multitude of dreams. And these -- the dreams -- writhed in and about,

taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the

orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there

strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And

then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of

the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes

of the chime die away -- they have endured but an instant -- and a

light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And

now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and

fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows

through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber

which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the

maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a

ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of

the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable

carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more

solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in

the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat

feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until

at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock.

And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the

waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all

things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by

the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that more of

thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the

thoughtful among those who reveled. And thus, too, it happened,

perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly

sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had

found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure

which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And

the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly

around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or

murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise -- then, finally,

of terror, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be

supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such

sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly

unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone

beyond the bounds of even the prince's indefinite decorum. There are

chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched

without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death

are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the

costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety

existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to

foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the

visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened

corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in

detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not

approved, by the mad revelers around. But the mummer had gone so far

as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in

blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was

besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which

with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its

role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be

convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror

or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him

-- "who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and

unmask him -- that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from

the battlements!" 

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince

Prospero as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven

rooms loudly and clearly -- for the prince was a bold and robust man,

and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale

courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight

rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who

at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and

stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain

nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had

inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to

seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the

prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one

impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made

his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step

which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber

to the purple -- through the purple to the green -- through the green

to the orange -- through this again to the white -- and even thence

to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It

was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and

the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through

the six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly

terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and

had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of

the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity

of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.

There was a sharp cry -- and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the

sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in

death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of

despair, a throng of the revelers at once threw themselves into the

black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood

erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in

unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like

mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any

tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come

like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in

the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the

despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went

out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods

expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable

dominion over all.