. Ignorant of its introduction
into the palace, imagining it, in the revival of their slavish fears,
to be the spectral offspring of the magic incantations of the senators
above, they turned with one accord and fled down the stairs. The sound
of their cries of fear grew fainter and fainter in the direction of the
garden as they hurried through the secret gates at the back of the
building. Then the heavy, regular tamp of the hunchback's footsteps,
as he paced the solitary corridors after them, bearing his burden of
death, became audible in awful distinctness; then that sound also died
away and was lost, and nothing more was heard in the banqueting-room
save the sharp clang of the blows still dealt against the steel
railings from the street.

But now these grew rare and more rare in their recurrence; the strong
metal resisted triumphantly the utmost efforts of the exhausted rabble
who assailed it. As the minutes moved on, the blows grew rapidly
fainter and fewer; soon they diminished to three, struck at long
intervals; soon to one, followed by deep execrations of despair; and,
after that, a great silence sank down over the palace and the street,
where such strife and confusion had startled the night-echoes but a few
moments before.

In the banqueting-hall this rapid succession of events--the marvels of
a few minutes--passed before Vetranio and Marcus as visions beheld by
their eyes, but neither contained nor comprehended by their minds.
Stolid in their obstinate recklessness, stupefied by the spectacle of
the startling perils--menacing yet harmless, terrifying though
transitory--which surrounded them, neither of the senators moved a
muscle or uttered a word, from the period when Thascius had fallen
beneath the hunchback's attack, to the period when the last blow
against the palace railings, and the last sound of voices from the
street, had ceased in silence. Then the wild current of drunken
exultation, suspended within them during this brief interval, flowed
once more, doubly fierce, in its old course. Insensible, the moment
after they had passed away, to the warning and terrific scenes they had
beheld, each now looked round on the other with a glance of triumphant
levity. 'Hark!' cried Vetranio, 'the mob without, feeble and cowardly
to the last, abandon their puny efforts to force my palace gates!
Behold our banqueting-tables still sacred from the intrusion of the
revolted menials, driven before my guest from the