Narcisse, wine-flushed and loud, and seeming to be the
mimic Comus of the crew. As with the power of divination, he at
once comprehended the spectacle. He had arrived opposite the
equivocal building wherein Narcisse and his companions had disappeared
some hours before, and the door of which had just been suddenly
flung open, and kindling with wrath he at once advanced upon the
bacchants in the midst of their orgies. At the same instant, from
the direction of the city and unseen by him, a tall rider on a
lofty steed, cloak flying to the breeze, swept by like an apparition;
greeted only with a comical yell of astonishment and derision from
one of the females, as like a spectre it swept by. But the hilarious
band before him was too much preoccupied with the performance of
its mockeries to have observed anything, and the advocate, with
eyes gleaming and fixed upon his son, who now perceiving him stood
terror stricken, approached the revellers, who subsided before him,
as, with grey hair fluttering in the wind, he came beneath the
extending boughs, like some denouncing Druid amidst the sacred
oaks, his countenance inflamed, his whole frame seeming to shake
as if in throes to eject some foul possession; or, rather, as if
he were himself a fierce, incarnate, and unfriendly spirit; and,
at length, addressing his son, who was now leaning against a tree,
both for support and concealment, he burst forth: "Miscreant!"--and
the word was echoed from the side of a huge, dilapidated barn,
--"Wretches," he hollowed; and the guilty crowd, fearing both
individual recognition and personal contact, again began to retire.

"Stay," he commanded, imperiously, "you are known, and flight shall
put the worst construction on your case;--halt, brawlers and bullies,
spendthrifts and bankrupts, breakers of the peace; sons of afflicted
parents, husbands of weeping wives, brothers of sisters both ashamed
and grieved; outlaws; the city's scum, the country's scourge, the
harvest that shall yet be reaped for the jail, and leave gleanings
for the gallows; abandoned creatures, linger;" and suddenly grasping
Narcisse: "Sirrah," he cried, "here is your nightly haunt, these
are your companions,--come with me, sir, come,--ah, will you resist
your"--father he was about to say, but he recoiled from the word
as from an adder, and, casting upon his son a look of unspeakable
disdain, he shook the writhing criminal, who the next moment escaped
from his hold, and sl