 the whole
city at stated periods, and overlooked the local stations. Such an arrangement
was wholly unknown at that time in every part of Germany, and was hailed with
general applause.
    To the astonishment, however, of everybody, it proved wholly ineffectual.
Houses were entered as before; the college chambers proved no sanctuary; indeed,
they were attacked with a peculiar obstinacy, which was understood to express a
spirit of retaliation for the alacrity of the students in combining for the
public protection. People were carried off as before. And continual notices
affixed to the gates of the college, the convents, or the schloss, with the
signature of The Masque, announced to the public his determination to persist,
and his contempt of the measures organized against him.
    The alarm of the citizens now became greater than ever. The danger was one
which courage could not face, nor prudence make provision for, nor wiliness
evade. All alike, who had once been marked out for attack, sooner or later fell
victims to the obstinacy of this mysterious foe. To have received even an
individual warning availed them not at all. Sometimes it happened that, having
received notice of suspicious circumstances indicating that The Masque had
turned his attention upon themselves, they would assemble round their dwellings,
or in their very chambers, a band of armed men sufficient to set the danger at
defiance. But no sooner had they relaxed in these costly and troublesome
arrangements, no sooner was the sense of peril lulled, and an opening made for
their unrelenting enemy, than he glided in with his customary success; and in a
morning or two after it was announced to the city that they also were numbered
with his victims.
    Even yet it seemed that something remained in reserve to augment the terrors
of the citizens, and push them to excess. Hitherto there had been no reason to
think that any murderous violence had occurred in the mysterious rencontres
between The Masque and his victims. But of late, in those houses, or college
chambers, from which the occupiers had disappeared, traces of bloodshed were
apparent in some instances, and of ferocious conflict in others. Sometimes a
profusion of hair was scattered on the ground; sometimes fragments of dress, or
splinters of weapons. Everything marked that on both sides, as this mysterious
agency advanced, the passions increased in intensity; determination and
murderous malignity on the one side, and the fury of resistance on the other.
    At length the last consummation was given to the public panic; for, as if
expressly to put an end to all doubts upon the spirit in which he conducted his
warfare, in
