The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange - the fifth with white - the sixth with violet. The third was green throughout,Īnd 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 These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations 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

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 visionĮmbraced but little more than one at a time. Have been expected from the duke's love of the bizarre. Here the case was very different as might Nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade.

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiouslyĪbroad, 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 ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there wasīeauty, there was wine. The prince had provided all theĪppliances 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 ofĭespair or of frenzy from within. The courtiers, having entered, broughtįurnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.

This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's ownĮccentric yet august taste. Seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. 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 When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to 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 theįace 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,Īnd sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. Blood was its Avator ] and its seal - the redness and the horror of blood. No pestilence had ever been soįatal, or so hideous. T HE “Red Death” had long devastated the country.

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