“Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies.  And they became accursed, and were still.  And the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven —­ and the thunder died away —­ and the lightning did not flash —­ and the clouds hung motionless —­ and the waters sunk to their level and remained —­ and the trees ceased to rock —­ and the water-lilies sighed no more —­ and the murmur was heard no longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast illimitable desert.  And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they were changed; —­ and the characters were SILENCE.

“And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his countenance was wan with terror.  And, hurriedly, he raised his head from his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened.  But there was no voice throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were SILENCE.  And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more.”

Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi —­ in the iron-bound, melancholy volumes of the Magi.  Therein, I say, are glorious histories of the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea —­ and of the Genii that over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven.  There was much lore too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona —­ but, as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all!  And as the Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb and laughed.  And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me because I could not laugh.  And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at him steadily in the face.

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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.