dashed against the
rough wall, and his brains were scattered on the pavement. Those who now
bent over his disfigured corpse exchanged looks of unutterable horror.

In the meantime the Wehr-Wolf had cleared the corridor, rapid as an
arrow shot from the bow; he sprung, bounding up a flight of steep stone
stairs as if the elastic air bore him on, and rushing through an open
door, burst suddenly upon the crowd that was so anxiously waiting to
behold the procession issue thence.

Terrific was the yell that the multitude sent forth--a yell formed of a
thousand combining voices, so long, so loud, so wildly agonizing, that
never had the welkin rung with so appalling an ebullition of human
misery before! Madly rushed the wolf amidst the people, dashing them
aside, overturning them, hurling them down, bursting through the mass
too dense to clear a passage of its own accord, and making the scene of
horror more horrible still by mingling his hideous howlings with the
cries--the shrieks--the screams that escaped from a thousand tongues.

No pen can describe the awful scene of confusion and death which now
took place. Swayed by no panic fear, but influenced by terrors of
dreadful reality, the people exerted all their force to escape from that
spot; and thus the struggling, crushing, pushing, crowding, fighting,
and all the oscillations of a multitude set in motion by the direst
alarms, were succeeded by the most fatal results. Women were thrown down
and trampled to death, strong men were scarcely able to maintain their
footing, many females were literally suffocated in the pressure of the
crowd, and mothers with young children in their arms excited no
sympathy.

Never was the selfishness of human nature more strikingly displayed than
on this occasion: no one bestowed a thought upon his neighbor: the
chivalrous Florentine citizens dashed aside the weak and helpless female
who barred his way with as little remorse as if she were not a being of
flesh and blood; and even husbands forgot their wives, lovers abandoned
their mistresses, and parents waited not an instant to succor their
daughters.

Oh! it was a terrible thing to contemplate, that dense mass, oscillating
furiously like the waves of the sea, sending up to heaven such appalling
sounds of misery, rushing furiously toward the avenues of egress,
falling back baffled and crushed, in the struggle where only the very
strongest prevailed, laboring to escape from death, and fighti