Table of Contents
1-About the story
2-The masque of the Red Death
2.1-Author
2.-The Masque of the Red Death
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 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 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 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 (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 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.
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.
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.
Comments
Post a Comment