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.