In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation.  In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum.  There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion.  Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.  The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed.  The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.  The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat.  And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around.  But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death.  His vesture was dabbled in blood —­ and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened with rage.

“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him —­ “who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery?  Seize him and unmask him —­ that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from the battlements!”

It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words.  They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and clearly —­ for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had become hushed at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale courtiers by his side.  At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker.  But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the purple —­ through the purple to the green —­ through the green to the orange —­ through this again to the white