The "Red Death" had long devastated the country.  No pestilence had
ever been so fatal, or so hideous.  Blood was its 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.