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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 29, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASQUE
OF THE RED DEATH ***

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.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MASQUE OF
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