Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE FOURTH 6. Chapter VI (continued)

And, with a thrilling and fierce groan, the Athenian fell back in the arms of the bystanders.

'He raves,' said the officer, compassionately; 'and in his delirium he has struck the priest. Hath any one present seen him to-day!'

'I,' said one of the spectators, 'beheld him in the morning. He passed my shop and accosted me. He seemed well and sane as the stoutest of us!'

'And I saw him half an hour ago,' said another, 'passing up the streets, muttering to himself with strange gestures, and just as the Egyptian has described.'

'A corroboration of the witness! it must be too true. He must at all events to the praetor; a pity, so young and so rich! But the crime is dreadful: a priest of Isis, in his very robes, too, and at the base itself of our most ancient chapel!'

At these words the crowd were reminded more forcibly, than in their excitement and curiosity they had yet been, of the heinousness of the sacrilege. They shuddered in pious horror.

'No wonder the earth has quaked,' said one, 'when it held such a monster!'

'Away with him to prison--away!' cried they all.

And one solitary voice was heard shrilly and joyously above the rest: 'The beasts will not want a gladiator now, Ho, ho, for the merry, merry show!

It was the voice of the young woman whose conversation with Medon has been repeated.

'True--true--it chances in season for the games!' cried several; and at that thought all pity for the accused seemed vanished. His youth, his beauty, but fitted him better for the purpose of the arena.

'Bring hither some planks--or if at hand, a litter--to bear the dead,' said Arbaces: 'a priest of Isis ought scarcely to be carried to his temple by vulgar hands, like a butchered gladiator.'