Avatar and its seal
          --the redness
               and the horror of blood.

    There were sharp pains,
           and sudden dizziness,
         and then profuse
              bleeding at the pores,
           with dissolution.

    The scarlet stains
           upon the body and especially
         upon the face
               of the victim,
           were the pest ban
              which shut him
                   out from the aid and
                       from the sympathy
                           of his fellow-men.

    And the whole seizure,
           progress and termination
               of the disease,
         were the incidents
               of half an hour.

    But the Prince Prospero
        was happy
               and dauntless and sagacious.

    When his dominions
        were half depopulated,
           he summoned
               to his presence
                   a thousand hale
                 and light-hearted friends from
               among the knights
                   and dames of his court,
         and with these retired
               to the deep seclusion
                   of one
                 of his castellated abbeys.

    This was an extensive
           and magnificent structure,
         the creation
            of the prince's own eccentric
                      yet august taste.

    A strong and lofty wall
        girdled it
        in. This wall had
         gates of iron.

    The courtiers,
           having entered,
         brought furnaces
               and massy hammers and
              welded the bolts.

    They resolved to leave
           means neither of ingress nor
              egress to
                   the sudden impulses of
          despair or
               of frenzy from within.

    The abbey was amply provisioned.

    With such precautions the courtiers
        might bid defiance to contagion.

    The external world