-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. Between the blows, which fell slowly and together at
regular intervals, the infuriated wretches, whose last exertions of
strength were strained to the utmost to deal them, could be heard
shouting breathlessly to each other: 'Strike harder, strike harder!
the back gates are guarded against us by our comrades admitted to the
pillage of the palace instead of us. You who would share the booty,
strike firm! the stones are at your feet, the gates of entrance yield
before you.'

Meanwhile a confused sound of trampling footsteps and contending voices
became audible from the lower apartments of the palace. Doors were
violently shut and opened--shouts and execrations echoed and re-echoed
along the lofty stone passages leading from the slaves' waiting-rooms
to the grand staircase; treachery betrayed itself as openly within the
building as violence still proclaimed itself in the assault on the
gates outside. The chief slaves had not been suspected by their
fellows without a cause; the bands of pillage and murder had been
organised in the house of debauchery and death; the chosen adherents
from the street had been secretly admitted through the garden gates,
and had barred and guarded them against further intrusion--another doom
than the doom they had impiously prepared for themselves was
approaching the devoted senators, at the hands of the slaves whom they
had oppressed, and the plebeians whom they had despised.

At the first sound of the assault without and the first intimation of
the treachery within, Vetranio, Thascius, and Marcus started from their
couches; the remainder of the guests, incapable either of thought or
action, lay, in stupid insensibility, awaiting their fate. These three
men alone comprehended the peril that threatened them, and, maddened
with drink, defied, in their ferocious desperation, the death that was
in store for them. 'Hark! they approach, the rabble revolted from our
rule,' cried Vetranio scornfully, 'to take the lives that we despise
and the treasures that we have resigned! The hour has come; I go to
fire the pile that involves in one common destruction our assassins and
ourselves!'

'Hold!' exclaimed Thascius, snatching the torch from his hand;