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“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… His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.”
Prospero and his court are unsettled and frightened by the mysterious guest’s appearance. They barely have time to process the his improbable entry before their marvel gives way to terror at the sight of the figure’s shroud-like garments and corpse-like mask. The mask is particularly upsetting because the bloody embellishments make the mysterious guest look like a recently deceased victim of the Red Death. The visual or aesthetic manifestation of the Red Death prefigures the actual outbreak of the Red Death that is about to occur.
“[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.”
When the courtiers are finally able to gather their courage and confront the mysterious guest on behalf of their prince, they are horrified to discover that there is no corporeal form beneath the figure’s garments and mask. It is here that they discover that the mysterious guest does not simply look like the effects of the Red Death, the mysterious guest is the Red Death, having assumed a humanlike form to enter the estate and claim the lives of those who thought that they had the money and power to avoid the disease.
