The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 281: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

250 THE COURT OF LONDON mocking laugh. “ Shall I cease? or shall I continue?” he demanded, after a pause and in a tone of indifference. ‘Proceed, proceed,’’ returned Meagles; ‘‘ and you must make allowances for any display of wonder or excitement on my part. I will however restrain myself as well as I am able. Goon. You were telling me that you exhumed the corpse of the peace-officer’s father, and that you mutilated it horribly.” ‘“ And the moon shone cold, serene, and placid upon the deed,’’ observed Melmoth. ‘‘ But no sooner had I accom- plished it, no sooner had I hacked and hewed the senseless corpse of the old man with as furious a vindictiveness and as ferocious a heartiness as if it had been the living peace-officer himself, no sooner had I thus yielded, I say, to that mono- mania of so frightful a character, when an awful reaction took place within me. The herculean strength that I had mani- fested in hollowing the grave dissolved rapidly into a child’s weakness; the raging excitement that had hurried me along subsided into the deepest despondency; the feverish heat that had made my whole frame appear as if every artery and vein were boiling with a lava stream, was succeeded by a cold sweat; and a sense of overpowering debility coming upon me, as 1f my very life were ebbing away, I sank down by the side of the corpse which I had mutilated. Conscious- ness abandoned me, and when I awoke to life again, the deep tone of the church clock proclaimed the hour of one in the morning. ‘IT had remained an hour in that profound lethargy, — a lethargy so closely resembling death itself, while it lasted. And on thus returning to a comprehension of the hideous scene in which I was the principal actor — or at least, the living one — I was seized with a mortal terror, and snatching up my spade, I fled from the spot. For the remainder of that night I wandered about like one demented, now under the influence of a stupendous horror, now giving way to the anguish of indescribable excruciations; at one time rushing madly on as if lashed by invisible fiends wielding whips of scorpions, at another time dragging myself slowly and pain- fully along as if drooping and sinking beneath the weight of an intolerable burden; now gloating over the revenge which I had consummated, and then recoiling from the bare idea of so tremendous a monstrosity. In the morning I GOMmicsooks (E()