e who stooped down and lifted
up the hangings to look at him.

Still more and more people talking and singing and laughing and twirling
about, till my brain went round and round, and I scarce knew what I did;
yet, somehow, I could not leave off; I dared not even look over my
shoulder, fearing lest I should see something so horrible as to make me
die.

So I got on with the service, and at last took the pyx, and took thereout
the sacred wafer, whereupon was a deep silence through all those rooms,
which troubled me, I think, more than all which had gone before, for I
knew well it did not mean reverence.

I held It up, that which I counted so holy, when lo! great laughter,
echoing like thunder-claps through all the rooms, not dulled by the
veiling hangings, for they were all raised up together, and, with a slow
upheaval of the rich clothes among which he lay, with a sound that was
half snarl, half grunt, with a helpless body swathed in bedclothes, a
huge _swine_ that I had been shriving tore from me the Holy Thing, deeply
scoring my hand as he did so with tusk and tooth, so that the red blood
ran quick on to the floor.

Therewithall he rolled down on to the floor, and lay there helplessly,
only able to roll to and fro, because of the swathings.

Then right madly skirled the intolerable laughter, rising to shrieks that
were fearfuller than any scream of agony I ever heard; the hundreds of
people through all those grand rooms danced and wheeled about me,
shrieking, hemming me in with interlaced arms, the women loosing their
long hair and thrusting forward their horribly-grinning unsexed faces
toward me till I felt their hot breath.

Oh! how I hated them all! almost hated all mankind for their sakes; how I
longed to get right quit of all men; among whom, as it seemed, all
sacredest things even were made a mock of. I looked about me fiercely, I
sprang forward, and clutched a sword from the gilded belt of one of those
who stood near me; with savage blows that threw the blood about the
gilded walls and their hangings right over the heads of those--things--I
cleared myself from them, and tore down the great stairs madly, yet could
not, as in a dream, go fast enough, because of my passion.

I was out in the courtyard, among the lime trees soon, the north wind
blowing freshly on my heated forehead in that dawn. The outer gate was
locked and bolted; I stooped and raised a great stone and sent it at the
lock with all my stre