



Produced by Levent Kurnaz. HTML version by Al Haines. The Masque of the Red Death

by Edgar Allan 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 nor 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 towards 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. These 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 colour 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 colour of the
windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
scarlet—a deep blood colour. 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 projected 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
harken 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 colours and effects. He
disregarded the _decora_ of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery,
and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. 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 movable embellishments of the seven
chambers, upon occasion of this great _fête_; 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 were 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.