The Masque of the Red Death
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 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 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 revelled. 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 revellers 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 centres 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 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
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 revellers 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.
-The End-
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