摇篮书归来，当然还是亲爱的爱伦坡恐怖故事，这次挑战原文，难度略大啊，不会每天一更但是期望一个月之内能完成吧哇哈哈。不负责地说歌剧魅影的假面舞会桥段跟这个故事真像啊……

132'

推荐先听个几遍再选择性地看原文啊
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The Masque of the Red Death

Poe, Edgar Allan
Published: 1842

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avator 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 or
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 could take care of itself.
In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had
provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were
improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was
Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was
the "Red Death."

图：来自谷歌，原作者貌似是Carlo Giambarresi
语音条：Q
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