the rooms in which it was held. There 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 firelight that streamed upon the dark
hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was ghastly in the extreme,
and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who
entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot
within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western
wall a gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a
dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the
circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from
the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and
deep and exceedingly musical; but of so peculiar a note and emphasis
that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the orchestra were
constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to hearken
to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions;
and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while
the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest
grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their
brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the echoes
had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the
musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own
nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other,
that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar
emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace
three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there
came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same
disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.
The tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours
and effects. He disregarded the _decora_ of mere fashion. His plans
were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre.
There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt
that he was not. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to
be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the movable embellishments of the
seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own
guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure
they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy
and phantasm--much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There
were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There
were delirious fancies as the madman fashions. There were much of
the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of
the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited
disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a
multitude of dreams. And these--the dreams--writhed in and about,
taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the
orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there
strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And
then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of
the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the
echoes of the chime die away--they have endured but an instant--and a
light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And
now again the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and
fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many tinted windows
through which stream the rays from the tripods. But to the chamber
which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of the
maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows a
ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness of
the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable
carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more
solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in
the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat
feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on,
until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the
clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions
of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of
all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be
sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, that
more of thought crept, with more of time, into the meditations of the
thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it happened,
perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly
sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had
found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure
which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And
the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly
around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or
murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of
terror, of horror, and of disgust.
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 jests 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
_rôle_, stalked to and from 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--and even thence to the
violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was
then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddened with rage and the
shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the
six chambers, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror
that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had
approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the
retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of
the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer.
There was a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable
carpet, upon which, instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death the
Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a
throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black
apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and
motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in
unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like
mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any
tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come
like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in
the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the
despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went
out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods
expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable
dominion over all.
VII
DR. MANETTE'S MANUSCRIPT
CHARLES DICKENS
"I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and
afterward resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my
doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year,
1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I
design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly
and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying
hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust.
"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write
with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney,
mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my
captivity. Hope has quite departed from my breast. I know from
terrible warnings I have noted in myself that my reason will not long
remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this time in
the possession of my right mind--that my memory is exact and
circumstantial--and that I write the truth as I shall answer for
these my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by men or
not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.
"One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think
the twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a
retired part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the
frosty air, at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the
Street of the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind
me, driven very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass,
apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a head was put out
at the window, and a voice called to the driver to stop.
"The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,
and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The
carriage was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time
to open the door and alight before I came up with it. I observed
that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal
themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door, I
also observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather
younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice,
and (as far as I could see) £ace too.
"'You are Doctor Manette?' said one.
"'I am.'
"'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young
physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or
two has made a rising reputation in Paris?'
"'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak
so graciously.'
"'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being so
fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were
probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of
overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?'
"The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these
words were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the
carriage door. They were armed. I was not.
"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me
the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case
to which I am summoned.'
"The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. 'Doctor,
your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case,
our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it
for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you
please to enter the carriage?'
"I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They
both entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the
steps. The carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.
"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt
that it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly
as it took place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task.
Where I make the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the
time, and put my paper in its hiding-place. * * * *
"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and
emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the
Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterward
when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently
stopped at a solitary house. We all three alighted, and walked, by a
damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had
overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately,
in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors
struck the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the
face.
"There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,
for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But,
the other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like
manner with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then
so exactly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin
brothers.
"From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found
locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had
relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was
conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we
ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the
brain, lying on a bed.
"The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not
much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were
bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that
these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of
them, which was a fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the
armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E.
"I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the
patient; for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her
face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her
mouth, and was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out
my hand to relieve her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the
embroidery in the corner caught my sight.
"I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm
her and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were
dilated and wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and
repeated the words, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and then
counted up to twelve, and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more,
she would pause to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin
again, and she would repeat the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my
brother!' and would count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There was
no variation in the order, or the manner. There was no cessation,
but the regular moment's pause in the utterance of these sounds.
"'How long,' I asked, 'has this lasted?'
"To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the
younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority.
It was the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'
"'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'
"'A brother.'
"'I do not address her brother?'
"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'
"'She has some recent association with the number twelve?'
"The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock.'
"'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast,
'how useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was
coming to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be
lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'
"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There
is a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put
it on the table. * * * *
"I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my
lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that
were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of
those.
"'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.
"'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no
more.
"I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many
efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it
after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then
sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed
woman in attendance (wife of the man downstairs), who had retreated
into a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently
furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some
thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden
the sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their
regular succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my
brother!' the counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so
violent, that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms;
but, I had looked to them, to see that they were not painful. The
only spark of encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the
sufferer's breast had this much soothing influence, that for minutes
at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no effect upon the
cries; no pendulum could be more regular.
"For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by
the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking
on, before the elder said:
"'There is another patient.'
"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'
"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light. *
* * *
"The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase,
which was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered
ceiling to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled
roof, and there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that
portion of the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in
sand. I had to pass through that part to get at the other. My
memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details,
and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close
of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.
"On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay
a handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most.
He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on
his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could
not see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but,
I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.
"'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me examine it.'
'"I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'
"It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand
away. The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to
twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had
been looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned
my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome
boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare,
or rabbit; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature.
"'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.
"'A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon
him, and has fallen by my brother's sword--like a gentleman.'
"There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity in this
answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient
to have that different order of creature dying there, and that it
would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of
his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling
about the boy, or about his fate.
"The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they
now slowly moved to me.
"'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are
proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us;
but we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her,
Doctor?'
"The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the
distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.
"I said, 'I have seen her.'
"'She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights,
these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years,
but we have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my
father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good
young man, too: a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that
man's who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad
race.'
"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily
force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.