Read This From Edgar Allan Poes the Masque of the Red Death and Answer the Question That Follows
Hear "The Masque of the Red Death" read aloud.
The Masque of the Red Death
The "Red Expiry" had long devastated the state. No pestilence had been ever and so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator and its seal — the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and and then profuse bleedings at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and specially upon the face of the victim, were the pest-ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his swain-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an 60 minutes.
Only the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless, and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and low-cal-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his courtroom, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an all-encompassing and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince'due south own eccentric yet august gustatory modality. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of fe. 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 from without or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external earth could take intendance of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasance. There were buffoons, at that place were improvisatori, there were ballêt-dancers, there were musicians, there were cards, there was Beauty, there was vino. All these and security were inside. Without was the "Scarlet Death."
It was towards the close of the 5th or sixth calendar month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his yard friends at a masked ball of the almost unusual magnificence. Information technology was a voluptuous scene that masquerade.
But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven — an purple suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide dorsum almost to the walls on either hand, then that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the instance was very dissimilar; as might have been expected from the duke'due south love of thebizarre. The apartments were then irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but niggling more than one at a time. There was a sharp plow at every twenty or 30 yards, and at each turn a novel outcome. To the right and left, in the eye 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 bedroom was regal in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were majestic. The third was light-green throughout, then were the casements. The fourth was furnished and litten with orangish — the 5th 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 carpeting of the same material and hue. Only, in this chamber merely, the color of the windows failed to represent with the decorations. The panes hither were cherry — a deep blood color. Now in no one of the 7 apartments was there whatsoever lamp or candelabra, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended from the roof. At that place was no calorie-free of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. Simply in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, begetting a brazier of burn 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. Simply 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 visitor bold enough to set human 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 boring, heavy, monotonous clang; and when its minute-paw made the circuit of the face up, and the hour was to be stricken, at that place came forth from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was articulate and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, just of so peculiar a annotation and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians in the orchestra were constrained to interruption, momently, in their performance, to harken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and at that place was a cursory 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 aged and sedate passed their easily over their brows as if in dislocated reverie or meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at one time pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled equally if at their ain nervousness and folly, and fabricated 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 1000 and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet some other chiming of the clock, then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation every bit before.
Simply, 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 overlooked thedecora of mere style. His plans were assuming and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. In that location are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary to hear and meet and touch him to becertain that he was not.
He had directed, in cracking function, the moveable embellishments of the 7 chambers, upon occasion of this greatfête, and it was his own guiding taste which had given graphic symbol to the costumes of the masqueraders. Exist certain 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 equally the madman fashions. There was much of the cute, much of the wanton, much of thebizarre, something of the terrible, and non a piffling of that which might accept excited disgust. To and fro in the 7 chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these, the dreams — writhed in and well-nigh, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem every bit the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And so, momently, all is still, and all is silent salvage the vocalism of the clock. The dreams are potent-frozen as they stand up. But the echoes of the chime die abroad — they have endured but an instant — and a light, half-subdued laughter floats later them as they depart. And at present again the music swells, and the dreams alive, 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 bedroom which lies most westwardly of the seven at that place are now none of the maskers who venture; for the nighttime is waning away; and in that location flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the black of the sable pall appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet, in that location comes from the virtually clock of ebony a muffled peal more than 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 out feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length was sounded the 12th hour 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 abeyance of all things every bit before. Just now there 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 fourth dimension, into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, again, it happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the oversupply who had found leisure to go enlightened of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attending of no unmarried individual earlier. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a fizz, or murmur, expressive at first of disapprobation and surprise — so, finally, of terror, of horror, and of cloy.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such awareness. In truth the masquerade license of the dark was nearly unlimited; but the effigy in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the premises of even the prince'southward indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Fifty-fifty with the utterly lost, to whom life and decease are equally jests, at that placeare matters of which no jest tin be properly 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 effigy was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from caput to pes in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made and so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And all the same all this might have been endured, if not approved, past the mad revellers around. Merely the mummer had gone so far as to assume the blazon of the Cherry-red Expiry. His vesture was dabbled inblood — and his broad forehead, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the red 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 itsrôle, 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 group that stood effectually him, "who dares thus to brand 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? — cease him and strip him, I say, of those reddened vestures of sacrilege!"
It was in the eastern or bluish 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 homo, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his paw.
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 management of the intruder, who at the moment was likewise nearly at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, fabricated closer approach to the speaker. Just from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were constitute none who put forth hand to seize him; and 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 pace which had distinguished him from the start, through the bluish bedchamber to the purple — through the purple to the light-green — through the greenish to the orange, — through this again to the white — and even thence to the violet, ere a decided move had been fabricated to abort him. Information technology was and 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 fatigued dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within 3 or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned all of a sudden round and confronted his pursuer. At that place was a sharp cry — and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in expiry the Prince Prospero. So, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the blackness apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose alpine figure stood cock 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 and so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was best-selling the presence of the Red Expiry. He had come like a thief in the dark. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his autumn. 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 Ruby Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Edgar Allan Poe
Published 1842
Image by Byam Shaw
Source: https://poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death/
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