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The Masque of the Red Death

The "Cherry-red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had been ever then fatal, or then hideous. Claret was its Avator and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. There were precipitous pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleedings at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the trunk and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest-ban which close him out from the help and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease were the incidents of one-half an hour.

Merely the Prince Prospero was happy and brave, and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and calorie-free-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'south own eccentric yet august taste. A stiff 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 go out means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair from without or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external globe could accept 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, in that location were improvisatori, there were ballêt-dancers, in that location were musicians, in that location were cards, at that place was Beauty, there was vino. All these and security were within. Without was the "Carmine Death."

It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously away, that the Prince Prospero entertained his k friends at a masked ball of the near unusual magnificence. It was a voluptuous scene that masquerade.

But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. In that location were seven — an imperial suite. In many palaces, nonetheless, 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. Hither the instance was very different; equally might have been expected from the knuckles's love of thebizarre. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but piffling more than 1 at a time. There was a sharp turn at every 20 or thirty yards, and at each plough a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of each wall, a alpine 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 accord with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the bedchamber into which it opened. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue — and vividly blueish were its windows. The second bedchamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and hither the panes were imperial. The third was green throughout, and and then were the casements. The fourth was furnished and litten 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 downward the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same cloth and hue. Simply, in this sleeping room only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were ruby — a deep claret colour. At present in no one of the seven apartments was in that location any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. There was no low-cal of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. Only in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, reverse to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire that projected its rays through the tinted glass and then glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. Merely in the western or black chamber the effect of the burn down-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a wait 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 flat, also, that at that place stood confronting the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a boring, heavy, monotonous clang; and when its minute-hand made the circuit of the face up, and the hour was to be stricken, there came forth from the brazen lungs of the clock a audio which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, only of then peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an 60 minutes, the musicians in the orchestra were constrained to pause, momently, in their operation, to harken to the audio; 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 stake, and that the more than aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a low-cal 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 like emotion; then, later the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three one thousand and 6 hundred seconds of the Fourth dimension that flies,) in that location came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation every bit 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 middle for colors and effects. He disregarded thedecora of mere way. His plans were bold and peppery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. Information technology was necessary to hear and see and bear upon him to existsure that he was non.

He had directed, in slap-up office, the moveable embellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this bullyfête, and information technology was his own guiding taste which had given character to the costumes of 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. In that location were delirious fancies such every bit the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of thebizarre, 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, betimes, at that place strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, momently, 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 low-cal, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And at present once more 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. Simply to the sleeping accommodation which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and at that place flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drape appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, there comes from the most clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reachestheir ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.

Simply these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the center of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length was sounded the 12th 60 minutes upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and in that location was an uneasy abeyance of all things as before. But at present at that place were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, possibly, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, again, it happened, perhaps, that earlier the last echoes of the terminal chime had utterly sunk into silence, in that location 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 at first of disapprobation and surprise — then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I accept painted, it may well exist supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the dark was nearly unlimited; just the effigy in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone across the bounds of even the prince'due south indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot exist touched without emotion. Fifty-fifty with the utterly lost, to whom life and expiry are equally jests, in that locationare matters of which no jest can be properly made. The whole company, indeed, seemed at present deeply to feel that in the costume and begetting of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to pes in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made then near to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the crook. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, past the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far equally to presume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled inclaret — and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the cerise horror.

When the optics of the Prince Prospero brutal upon this spectral epitome (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain itsrôle, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to exist convulsed, in the first moment, with a stiff shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his forehead reddened with rage.

"Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the grouping that stood effectually him, "who dares thus to make mockery of our woes? Uncase the varlet that we may know whom we have to hang to-morrow at sunrise from the battlements. Volition no one stir at my bidding? — terminate him and strip him, I say, of those reddened vestures of sacrilege!"

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero every bit he uttered these words. They rang throughout the 7 rooms loudly and clearly — for the prince was a assuming and robust man, and the music had go hushful at the waving of his mitt.

Information technology was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At commencement, equally he spoke, in that location was a slight rushing movement of this group in the management of the intruder, who at the moment was too near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. Merely from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole political party, at that place were found none who put forth paw to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed inside a yard of the prince's person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with i impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, just with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blueish chamber to the purple — through the majestic to the green — through the green to the orangish, — through this again to the white — and fifty-fifty thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was and so, 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 3 or 4 feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly round and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which instantly afterwards, brutal prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers 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 trigger-happy a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was best-selling the presence of the Red Expiry. He had come up like a thief in the night. And ane by one dropped the revellers in the claret-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 terminal of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Blood-red Death held illimitable rule over all.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Published 1842

Prototype by Byam Shaw

williamsalast1947.blogspot.com

Source: https://poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death/

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