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

The Masque of the Red Death