and 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 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