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.
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