'Ha!' thought the Egyptian, instantaneously divining his state and its
terrible cause; 'so, then, the hell-draught works, and destiny hath sent
thee hither to crush two of my foes at once!'
Quickly, even ere this thought occurred to him, he had withdrawn on one
side of the chapel, and concealed himself amongst the boughs; from that
lurking place he watched, as a tiger in his lair, the advance of his
second victim. He noted the wandering and restless fire in the bright
and beautiful eyes of the Athenian; the convulsions that distorted his
statue-like features, and writhed his hueless lip. He saw that the
Greek was utterly deprived of reason. Nevertheless, as Glaucus came up
to the dead body of Apaecides, from which the dark red stream flowed
slowly over the grass, so strange and ghastly a spectacle could not fail
to arrest him, benighted and erring as was his glimmering sense. He
paused, placed his hand to his brow, as if to collect himself, and then
saying:
'What ho! Endymion, sleepest thou so soundly? What has the moon said to
thee? Thou makest me jealous; it is time to wake'--he stooped down with
the intention of lifting up the body.
Forgetting--feeling not--his own debility, the Egyptian sprung from his
hiding-place, and, as the Greek bent, struck him forcibly to the ground,
over the very body of the Christian; then, raising his powerful voice to
its highest pitch, he shouted:
'Ho, citizens--oh! help me!--run hither--hither!--A murder--a murder
before your very fane! Help, or the murderer escapes!' As he spoke, he
placed his foot on the breast of Glaucus: an idle and superfluous
precaution; for the potion operating with the fall, the Greek lay there
motionless and insensible, save that now and then his lips gave vent to
some vague and raving sounds.
As he there stood awaiting the coming of those his voice still continued
to summons, perhaps some remorse, some compunctious visitings--for
despite his crimes he was human--haunted the breast of the Egyptian; the
defenceless state of Glaucus--his wandering words--his shattered reason,
smote him even more than the death of Apaecides, and he said, half
audibly, to himself:
'Poor clay!--poor human reason; where is the soul now? I could spare
thee, O my rival--rival never more! But destiny must be obeyed--my
safety demands thy sacrifice.' With that, as if to drown compunction, he
shouted yet more loudly; and drawing from the girdle of Glaucus the
stilus it contained, he steeped it in the blood of the murdered man, and
laid it beside the corpse.
And now, fast and breathless, several of the citizens came thronging to
the place, some with torches, which the moon rendered unnecessary, but
which flared red and tremulously against the darkness of the trees; they
surrounded the spot. 'Lift up yon corpse,' said the Egyptian, 'and
guard well the murderer.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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