It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. 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. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. 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. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. 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. The panes here were scarlet - a deep blood color. But, in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. 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. The fourth was furnished and litten with orange - the fifth with white - the sixth with violet. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. That at the eastern extremity was hung, for example, in blue - and vividly blue were its windows. 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. 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. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little more than one at a time. Here the case was very different as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. 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. It was a voluptuous scene that masquerade.īut first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. 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. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballêt-dancers, there were musicians, there were cards, there was Beauty, there was wine. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The external world could take care of itself. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair from without or of frenzy from within. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. 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. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease were the incidents of half an hour.īut the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless, and sagacious. 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. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleedings at the pores, with dissolution. Blood was its Avator and its seal - the redness and the horror of blood. No pestilence had been ever so fatal, or so hideous. The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. Hear “The Masque of the Red Death” read aloud.
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