These two--the last-remaining combatants of the strife--
having drained their cups to the health proposed, passed slowly down
each side of the room, looking contemptuously on their prostrate
companions, and extinguishing every lamp but the two which burnt over
their own couches. Then returning to the upper end of the tables, they
resumed their places, not to leave them again until the fatal rivalry
was finally decided, and the moment of firing the pile had actually
arrived.
The torch lay between them; the last vases of wine stood at their sides.
Not a word escaped the lips of either, to break the deep stillness
prevailing over the palace. Each fixed his eyes on the other, in stern
and searching scrutiny, and cup for cup, drank in slow and regular
alternation. The debauch, which had hitherto presented a spectacle of
brutal degradation and violence, now that it was restricted to two men
only--each equally unimpressed by the scenes of horror he had beheld,
each vying with the other for the attainment of the supreme of
depravity--assumed an appearance of hardly human iniquity; it became a
contest for a satanic superiority of sin.
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