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Title: The Masque of the Red Death

Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Release Date: June 6, 2010 [EBook #1064]
[Most recently updated: October 18, 2020]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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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. 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-coloured 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 indulged 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 rumour 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 licence 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 the 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.




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