The tyrannic Thascius, regarding him with a scowl of drunken wrath,
seized an empty vase, and poising it in his unsteady hand, prepared to
hurl it at the hunchback's prostrate form, when again a single cry--a
woman's--rising above the increasing uproar in the street, rang shrill
and startling through the banqueting-hall. The patrician suspended his
purpose as he heard it, mechanically listening with the half-stupid,
half-cunning attention of intoxication. 'Help! help!' shrieked the
voice beneath the palace windows--'he follows me still--he attacked my
dead child in my arms! As I flung myself down upon it on the ground, I
saw him watching his opportunity to drag it by the limbs from under me--
famine and madness were in his eyes--I drove him back--I fled--he
follows me still!--save us, save us!'
At this instant her voice was suddenly stifled in the sound of fierce
cries and rushing footsteps, followed by an appalling noise of heavy
blows, directed at several points, against the steel railings before the
palace doors.
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