s 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. These 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
colour 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 colour of the windows
failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes here were
scarlet--a deep blood colour. 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 thro