Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 6. Chapter VI (continued)

'What ho! Endymion, sleepest thou so soundly? What has the moon said to thee? Thou makest me jealous; it is time to wake'--he stooped down with the intention of lifting up the body.

Forgetting--feeling not--his own debility, the Egyptian sprung from his hiding-place, and, as the Greek bent, struck him forcibly to the ground, over the very body of the Christian; then, raising his powerful voice to its highest pitch, he shouted:

'Ho, citizens--oh! help me!--run hither--hither!--A murder--a murder before your very fane! Help, or the murderer escapes!' As he spoke, he placed his foot on the breast of Glaucus: an idle and superfluous precaution; for the potion operating with the fall, the Greek lay there motionless and insensible, save that now and then his lips gave vent to some vague and raving sounds.

As he there stood awaiting the coming of those his voice still continued to summons, perhaps some remorse, some compunctious visitings--for despite his crimes he was human--haunted the breast of the Egyptian; the defenceless state of Glaucus--his wandering words--his shattered reason, smote him even more than the death of Apaecides, and he said, half audibly, to himself:

'Poor clay!--poor human reason; where is the soul now? I could spare thee, O my rival--rival never more! But destiny must be obeyed--my safety demands thy sacrifice.' With that, as if to drown compunction, he shouted yet more loudly; and drawing from the girdle of Glaucus the stilus it contained, he steeped it in the blood of the murdered man, and laid it beside the corpse.

And now, fast and breathless, several of the citizens came thronging to the place, some with torches, which the moon rendered unnecessary, but which flared red and tremulously against the darkness of the trees; they surrounded the spot. 'Lift up yon corpse,' said the Egyptian, 'and guard well the murderer.'

They raised the body, and great was their horror and sacred indignation to discover in that lifeless clay a priest of the adored and venerable Isis; but still greater, perhaps, was their surprise, when they found the accused in the brilliant and admired Athenian.