Project Gutenberg's The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe

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Title: The Masque of the Red Death

Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Release Date: June 6, 2010 [EBook #1064]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Masque of the Red Death

by

Edgar Allan Poe

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 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 towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of hi