he uttered the last word, and gaining a point of view from
which the light of the lamp fell full upon the solemn and stony
features of the corpse, looked up defiantly at it. In an instant a
frightful change passed over him, the manuscript dropped from his hand,
his deformed frame shrank and tottered, a shrill cry of recognition
burst from his lips, more like the yell of a wild beast than the voice
of a man.

The next moment, when the guests started up to question or deride him,
he turned slowly and faced them. Desperate and drunken as they were,
his look awed them into utter silence. His face was deathlike in hue,
as the face of the corpse above him--thick drops of perspiration
trickled down it like rain--his dry glaring eyes wandered fiercely over
the startled countenances before him, and, as he extended towards them
his clenched hands, he muttered in a deep gasping whisper: 'Who has
done this? MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

As these few words--of awful import though of simple form--fell upon
the ears of those whom he addressed, such of them as were not already
sunk in insensibility looked round on each other almost sobered for the
moment, and all speechless alike. Not even the clash of the wine-cups
was now heard at the banqueting-table--nothing was audible but the
sound, still fitfully rising and falling, of the voices of terror,
ribaldry, and anguish from the street; and the hoarse convulsive
accents of the hunchback, still uttering at intervals his fearful
identification of the dead body above him: 'MY MOTHER! MY MOTHER!'

At length Vetranio, who was the first to recover himself, addressed the
terrified and degraded wretch before him, in tones which, in spite of
himself, betrayed, as he began, an unwonted tremulousness and
restraint. 'What, Reburrus!' he cried, 'are you already drunken to
insanity, that you call the first dead body which by chance I
encountered in the street, and by chance brought hither, your mother?
Was it to talk of your mother, whom dead or alive we neither know nor
care for, that you were admitted here? Son of obscurity and inheritor
of rags, what are your plebeian parents to us!' he continued, refilling
his cup, and lashing himself into assumed anger as he spoke. 'To your
dialogue without delay, or you shall be flung from the windows to
mingle with your rabble-equals in the street!'

Neither by word nor look did the hunchback answer the senator's
menaces. For him, the voice of the li