What is the mood of "The Masque of the Red Death"?I need to find a passage that best fits it.

I would actually go for the very last paragraph of the
story, which, to my mind, makes explicit what has been implicit throughout the tale. The
story has been a putting off of the inevitable, as Prince Prospero has tried to "cheat"
the Red Death by locking himself and his courtiers away and sealing themselves off from
the rest of the Kingdom. Yet if we take the Red Death as a symbol of death itself, we
realise how futile this is. The last paragraph shows the puncturing of this particular
dream as all the guests and courtiers have to face the harsh reality of
death:

And now
was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night.
And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died
each in the despairing posture of their fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out
with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness
and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over
all.

This sums up the mood of
grim despair and the certainty of the victory of death against all - no matter how
wealthy, powerful or important. Note how the repetition of sentences beginning with
"And" strengthens the sense of inevitability and the powerful might of death against all
who try to resist it. A grim end indeed....