THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 
 
                             by Edgar Allan Poe 
 
                       [Text in the public domain.] 
 
 
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 madness 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 incidents of half an hour. 
     But 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 crenellated 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 
improvisorati, 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 toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion 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.  There 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 extant 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 the 
right and left, in 
 
(p. 270) 
 
the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a 
closed corridor of 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 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 color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations.  The panes were 
scarlet -- a deep blood color.  Now in no one of any of the seven apartments was there 
any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to 
and fro and 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 each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays 
through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room.  And thus were produced a multitude 
of gaudy and fantastic appearances.  But in the western or back 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 within this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic 
clock of ebony.  It 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 hearken 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 
revery 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  
 
(p. 271) 
 
(which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of 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 color 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_ he was not. 
     He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the seven chambers, 
upon occasion of this great fete; 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 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 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 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 of 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-colored panes; and the 
blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable 
carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly 
emphatic than any which reaches _their_ ears who indulge 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  
 
(p. 272) 
 
time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled.  And thus too, it
happened, 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 rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, 
there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, 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 
license 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 
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 his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror. 
     When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell on 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 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  
 
(p. 273) 
 
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 a 
hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince's 
person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers 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 -- to 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, maddened 
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 most instantly afterward, 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.