The Raven
Page: 8

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 indulged 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 licence 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