The
fingers of the tortured wretch closed as if they were never to be
unlocked again--closed as if with the clutch of death, with the last
frantic grasp of a drowning man.
For days and nights past he had toiled incessantly under the relentless
tyranny of his frenzy, building up higher and higher his altar of idols,
and pouring forth his invocations before his gods in the place of the
sacrifice; and now, at the moment when he was most triumphant in his
ferocious activity of purpose, when his fancied bondman and his fancied
victim were most helpless at his command--now, when his strained
faculties were strung to their highest pitch, the long-deferred paroxysm
had seized him, which was the precursor of his repose, of the only
repose granted by his awful fate--a change (the mournful change already
described) in the form of his insanity. For at those rare periods when
he slept, his sleep was not unconsciousness, not rest: it was a trance
of hideous dreams--his tongue spoke, his limbs moved, when he slumbered
as when he woke.
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