The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe

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The best backyard playsets for girlsMasque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan Poe

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence hadever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—theredness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness,and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stainsupon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest banwhich shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. Andthe whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidentsof half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When hisdominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand haleand light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, andwith these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. Thiswas an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’sown eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. Thiswall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces andmassy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither ofingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within.The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might biddefiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In themeantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all theappliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, therewere ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine.All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death”.

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, andwhile the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prosperoentertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusualmagnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the roomsin which it was held. These were seven—an imperial suite. In manypalaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the foldingdoors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of thewhole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different, as mighthave been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. Theapartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but littlemore than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirtyyards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle ofeach wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridorwhich pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glasswhose colour varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations ofthe chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, forexample in blue—and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber waspurple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. Thethird was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnishedand lighted with orange—the fifth with white—the sixth with violet.The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hungall over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpetof the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the colour of thewindows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here werescarlet—a deep blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apartments wasthere any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that layscattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no light of any kindemanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in thecorridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, aheavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through thetinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced amultitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the western or blackchamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangingsthrough the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced sowild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few ofthe company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, agigantic 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, andthe hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock asound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of sopeculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians ofthe orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, toharken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions;and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while thechimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, andthe more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confusedreverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughterat once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled asif at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to theother, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similaremotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace threethousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yetanother chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert andtremulousness and meditation as before.

But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The tastesof the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and effects. Hedisregarded the decoraof mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery,and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would havethought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hearand see and touch him to be surethat he was not.

He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the sevenchambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guidingtaste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they weregrotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy andphantasm—much of what has been since seen in “Hernani”. Therewere arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There weredelirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of thebeautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of theterrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and froin the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. Andthese—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 thevelvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voiceof the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of thechime die away—they have endured but an instant—and a light,half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now again the musicswells, 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 thetripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there arenow none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and thereflows a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness ofthe 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 emphaticthan any which reaches theirears who indulged in the more remotegaieties of the other apartments.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishlythe heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length therecommenced 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 wasan uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokesto be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, thatmore of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of thethoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, perhaps, thatbefore the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, therewere many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of thepresence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no singleindividual before. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itselfwhisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, ormurmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, ofterror, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposedthat no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth themasquerade licence of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure inquestion had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even theprince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the mostreckless 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 jestcan be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in thecostume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. Thefigure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments ofthe grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemblethe countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have haddifficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, ifnot approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as toassume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled inblood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, wasbesprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of the Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which, witha slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked toand fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first momentwith a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his browreddened with rage.

“Who dares,”—he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stoodnear him—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seizehim 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 heuttered 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 atthe waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiersby his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of thisgroup in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near athand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to thespeaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of themummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth handto seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’sperson; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from thecentres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but withthe same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first,through the blue chamber to the purple—through the purple to thegreen—through the green to the orange—through this again to thewhite—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been madeto arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddening withrage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through thesix chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that hadseized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapidimpetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when thelatter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenlyand confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger droppedgleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fellprostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage ofdespair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the blackapartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect andmotionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horrorat finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask, which they handled with soviolent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like athief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewedhalls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. Andthe life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And theflames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death heldillimitable dominion over all.

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