Capítulo 10 de 23

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 redness 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 the incidents of half an hour.

But the 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 castellated 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 or 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, 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.

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 extent 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 every twenty

or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. 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. 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 here were

scarlet—a deep blood color. 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. 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 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. And thus

were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. 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.

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 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 reverie 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

the 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 colors 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 that he was

not.

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of

the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; 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 since

seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque figures with unsuited

limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the

madman fashions. There was 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 there 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

again 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 from 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 appals; and to him

whose foot falls upon 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, perhaps, 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, expressive of

disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, 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 had 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 the face, was

besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon 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 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 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 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 hand to seize him; 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 step which had distinguished him from

the first, through the blue chamber to the purple—through 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, 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 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, instantly afterwards,

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.