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security were within. Without was the "Red Death".
It was towards 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. 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
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