o. All the clergy had risen from
their places, and the deacons of honour started forward to lay their
hands on the preacher's arm. But he wrenched it away, and faced them
suddenly, with the eyes of an angry wild beast.

"What is this? Is there not blood enough? Wait your turn, jackals; you
shall all be fed!"

They shrank away and huddled shivering together, their panting
breath thick and loud, their faces white with the whiteness of chalk.
Montanelli turned again to the people, and they swayed and shook before
him, as a field of corn before a hurricane.

"You have killed him! You have killed him! And I suffered it, because I
would not let you die. And now, when you come about me with your lying
praises and your unclean prayers, I repent me--I repent me that I have
done this thing! It were better that you all should rot in your vices,
in the bottomless filth of damnation, and that he should live. What is
the worth of your plague-spotted souls, that such a price should be paid
for them? But it is too late--too late! I cry aloud, but he does not
hear me; I beat at the door of the grave, but he will not wake; I stand
alone, in desert space, and look around me, from the blood-stained earth
where the heart of my heart lies buried, to the void and awful heaven
that is left unto me, desolate. I have given him up; oh, generation of
vipers, I have given him up for you!

"Take your salvation, since it is yours! I fling it to you as a bone is
flung to a pack of snarling curs! The price of your banquet is paid for
you; come, then, and gorge yourselves, cannibals, bloodsuckers--carrion
beasts that feed on the dead! See where the blood streams down from the
altar, foaming and hot from my darling's heart--the blood that was shed
for you! Wallow and lap it and smear yourselves red with it! Snatch and
fight for the flesh and devour it--and trouble me no more! This is the
body that was given for you--look at it, torn and bleeding, throbbing
still with the tortured life, quivering from the bitter death-agony;
take it, Christians, and eat!"

He had caught up the sun with the Host and lifted it above his head; and
now flung it crashing down upon the floor. At the ring of the metal on
stone the clergy rushed forward together, and twenty hands seized the
madman.

Then, and only then, the silence of the people broke in a wild,
hysterical scream; and, overturning chairs and benches, beating at the
doorways, trampling one upon another, tea